Flying with Di2 Bicycle
 

I don't have Di2, so haven't run specifically into this issue. However it is standard airline protocol to have any kind of batteries carried on so I'm not surprised. How was the riding in Vietnam? I have 200,000 air miles I need to burn soon so was thinking about a cycling (more MTB) trip to Asia in the next year or so.

You can't have batteries in checked luggage for some airlines.. To be safe,you need to carry them on. There have been several aircraft crashes from Li-ion batteries that caught fire in the cargo hold and wasn't discovered until it was too late. The idea is that if it's in the passenger compartment, then someone is going to see it before it gets out of control. If you had taken that battery out of the bike and had it in your carry-on you would have been just fine. In point of fact, that is what we do with our eTap batteries and have not had a problem. From a safety perspective, I pretty much agree with keeping batteries out of the cargo hold and keeping them where they can be seen.

Looking at the TSA and FAA websites, they say that you cannot carry SPARE Lithium ion batteries in luggage but if it's in equipment, then it's ok. Depending on how your bike was set up - if all the Di2 parts were disconnected, then it's sort of like a spare battery since it's not connected to anything. But I know TSA screeners are not that smart so they simply didn't know what to think about a battery in a bike. The cylindrical battery of the Di2 seat tube battery with wires hanging out of it probably really freaked them out and looked like a bomb to them.

The Stans sealant in bottles in your luggage was stupid on their part and wrong. That should have been fine. They probably just didn't know what it was. If it had been cough medicine (for example) they wouldn't have said anything. Once they freaked out over the Di2 battery, then they were on everything like white on rice.

J.

So no electric toothbrushes, hr monitors, garmins or beard trimmers in the checked luggage, huh?

Another reason to have a steel bike frame. ;-)

I have flown with my Di2 bike a few times and the battery has never been an issue before, both in North America as well as Europe. I assume the Vietnamese were just being overly cautious and literal regarding the rules. I find pulling and reinstalling the battery from inside the seatpost a pain and would prefer to leave it where it is when I fly. Regarding the Sealant, I was not in a position to argue as I was escorted into the bowels of the airport in the oversize luggage screening area with my flight boarding at the time. They also confiscated a small bottle of chain lube.

That minor issue aside the cycling experience was amazing having ridden the Ho Chi Minh Highway from Hanoi to Hoi An.

If your battery in your carry on catches fire, the cabin crew have probably trained on extinguishing those fires ..

They cannot get to it in the cargo hold, those fires have already killed everyone aboard when the plane went down ...

Exactly right. There have been a number of both cargo and passenger crashes because of fires in the cargo hold from Li-ion batteries. It was a UPS plane that went down when a shipment of li-ion cells caught fire.

That said, the TSA and the FAA both do not prohibit Li-ion batteries from being transported in luggage as long as they are not spare cells. So they have to be inserted in equipment. I presume this is to prevent the contacts inadvertently being shorted and causing a fire, but I'm not sure that is a difference with a distinction. The FAA prohibits spare cells in carryon luggage which I think is a good thing.

At any rate, having this Di2 battery in the hold should have been allowed because it wasn't a "spare cell" and it was in equipment and connected. That said, I do have this image of a TSA inspector putting that bike through an X-ray scanner and seeing this cylindrical object with wires coming out of it.......

J.

I'd like to believe "certainly."

It happened during his flight home from Viet Nam.

Ah. I missed the direction of the flight. But that shouldn't matter.

If the flight initiated in Viet Nam and terminated in the (presumably) US, then the security and safety precautions have to meet the FAA in order to land here. That was true for the many flights I've had from Korea to the US so I'm sure that applies to Viet Nam as well. I also got a speech from a security officer in Norway this summer about that exact thing when they were inspecting my carryon bag in Norway on a return flight to the US. He told me why they were doing this was because the US required it. I think because of the volume of air travel into and out of the US, that the US TSA and FAA requirements probably are adopted for a lot of other travel between destination that are not in the US out of convenience and to have one security process flow.

But I guess all of that is subject to override by airline policy too. The airlines can certainly be more restrictive in their policy than the security agencies. I guess what it gets down to is if you have Li-ion batteries you want to take with you, do it in your carryon luggage and keep the size below the max size allowed. I don't think that has ever been a problem. At least it hasn't been for me in more than a million miles.

hmm.. presumably though it also has to meet the security and safety precautions of the host country in order to LEAVE there.

You should have just said, "But then the bomb wont go off". Just to see what would have happened.

This, but in a Vietnamese jail: https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...ed/2880691002/

No kidding. A mistake like that could end badly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/w...on-abuses.html