Lithium ion battery fire statistics: how often do they catch fire?

The short answer

The short version

The 4 numbers that matter

Everything below unpacks these. Each one is sourced in the table further down.

Fires on planes

How many lithium battery fires happen on planes each year?

The lithium battery fires on planes statistics most often quoted come from two data sets. They count slightly differently, so we don’t add them together.

The newest figures are in the UL Standards and Engagement 2025 data review, published August 13, 2026 from its TRIP incident database. Passenger-flight incidents rose from 107 in 2024 to 123 in 2025, which UL says partly reflects more airlines joining the program. By the end of 2025 the database held 1,164 incident records from more than 40 passenger and cargo airlines.

The fuller breakdown by device is still the UL Standards and Engagement 2024 data review, published in May 2025. By the end of 2024 that database held 942 incident records across 75 carriers.

Its 2024 count of passenger-flight incidents was the second highest since 2019. Of those incidents, 89 percent happened on the aircraft itself, and 52 percent happened during cruise, when the plane is furthest from an airport. In 2025 the on-aircraft share was 84 percent, and 12 percent of incidents ended in a diversion, a return to the gate, an evacuation or unplanned deplaning.

For FAA lithium battery incidents, the regulator publishes an interactive chart of smoke, fire and extreme heat events it is aware of. The FAA says the chart isn’t a complete list; it was last updated August 11, 2026.

The UL report, citing FAA data, puts the FAA’s 2024 figure 12 incidents higher than 2023, a 16 percent rise. On August 25, 2025 the FAA issued Safety Alert for Operators 25002, voluntary guidance asking airlines to review their passenger messaging on power banks and portable chargers.

Are power banks the main cause?

Yes, since 2025. Power banks caused 30 percent of passenger-flight incidents that year, up 42 percent on 2024, which made them the leading device for the first time. Vapes, the top cause in 2024, fell to second even though their own incidents rose 26 percent, and phones came third, per the 2025 UL review.

A year earlier the order was different: in 2024 vapes caused 28 percent of incidents, power banks 19 percent, phones 18 percent and laptops 15 percent. The one-year swing is the story. UL says the rise is not fully understood, but points to casual handling, the lack of the battery-management protections built into phones and laptops, and the wider spread in cell quality, including uncertified or counterfeit cells.

One figure moved sharply: in 2024 only one incident, 1 percent, involved charging from the aircraft’s own USB or AC outlet. In 2025 that share was 12 percent. Another 33 percent of 2025 incidents involved a device the passenger was carrying or holding but not using, up 12 points in a year.

Darleene asks

“More than two a week sounds scary. Should I stop flying with my power bank?”

Alisdair: no. That is why the rule is carry-on only: if a bank does overheat, the crew can reach it in seconds, which nobody can do in the hold.

Keep it in your carry-on, keep it where you can see it rather than in the overhead bin, and retire any bank that’s swollen, dented or runs hot.

Passengers

What percentage of passengers carry a portable charger?

These power bank statistics come from the passenger survey of US travelers published in the same UL Standards and Engagement report.

Survey of US travelers, UL Standards and Engagement, May 2025. Figures are self-reported.

Darleene’s take My big power bank lives in my carry-on for the flight home, never the checked bag. If they take my case at the gate, the bank comes out first.

What is the watt-hour limit for a power bank on a plane?

Under FAA PackSafe, spare lithium-ion batteries and power banks go in carry-on bags only, and must come out of any bag checked at the gate. Each one is limited to 100Wh.

Between 101 and 160Wh needs airline approval, with a limit of two spares per person. At the 3.7V cell rating, 100Wh works out to about 27,000mAh, a calculated estimate using Wh = mAh × 3.7 ÷ 1,000.

The sourced reference table

Every statistic, row by row

All the lithium ion battery fire statistics on this page, one per row. Each statistic’s name links to the source we read, and every row carries the month we last checked it.

Every statistic stays on this page whichever topic you pick; the filter only narrows the view. We recheck every row quarterly. Tom’s Hardware is a review publication, so it is named rather than linked.

How we checked this

We read every figure above in its original source, not in a news report or on another statistics page. The name in each row links to the exact document we read.

• What counts as a source. Regulators, standards bodies, independent researchers and published measurements. A manufacturer figure appears only as a statement about its own product, and says so.
• Separate data sets stay separate. The TRIP database and the FAA chart count differently, so no sentence here combines them.
• Different measuring points are labeled. iFixit measured wall to battery; Tom’s Hardware measured the charger’s own conversion. Both are right, and they answer different questions.
• Calculated estimates are marked. Where we derive a number, such as the mAh equivalent of 100Wh, the words calculated estimate sit beside it.
• No prices or damage totals. The recall notices carry both; this page reproduces neither.
• Corrections. If we have a row wrong, tell us and we will fix it and note the change in the log below.

Update log

Recalls

How many Anker power banks were recalled in 2025?

Two US recalls, both announced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, are the biggest portable charger fire statistics of the year.

The June 12, 2025 recall covered the PowerCore 10000, model A1263, after 19 reports of fires and explosions, two minor burn injuries and 11 reports of property damage.

The September 18, 2025 recall covered models A1647, A1652, A1257, A1681 and A1689, after 33 reports of fire and explosion, four minor burn injuries and one report of substantial property damage.

These power bank fire statistics count reported incidents. They do not tell you how likely any single unit is to fail.

Charging

How much energy does wireless charging waste compared with a cable?

The wireless charging statistics below come from one careful set of measurements, and the bases matter.

iFixit measured a wired charge drawing 18.25Wh from the wall to fill a 12.7Wh battery, a 35.9 percent loss that includes the phone’s own charging circuitry. MagSafe drew 23.33Wh for the same charge.

The budget Qi pad drew 33.93Wh for the charge alone. Left on the pad for a full day including standby, it drew 57.93Wh, 104 percent more than wired; that’s a different basis from the single-charge figures, so quote it separately.

Wall chargers on their own waste far less. Tom’s Hardware measured 20 of them in June 2026 and found 89 to 93 percent efficiency for all but two outliers at 85 and 86 percent.

The two figures measure different things. iFixit counts everything from the wall outlet to the battery, while Tom’s Hardware counts only the charger’s own conversion, which is why iFixit’s loss looks so much bigger.

Darleene’s version A cable wastes the least. A charging pad is handy, but a cheap one can use nearly twice the power for the same charge.

Why do chargers get hot?

Lost energy becomes heat. At 90 percent efficiency a 65W charger sheds about 7W as heat, a calculated estimate using heat = output × (1 ÷ efficiency − 1).

Tom’s Hardware found all three 140W chargers it measured throttled after 15 minutes, while none in the 45 to 68W band did. Gallium nitride helps: its bandgap is 3.4 electron volts against 1.1 for silicon, per IEEE Spectrum, which is why GaN chargers switch faster and run cooler. Our GaN picks are in the best GaN charger roundup.

Our own WITRN meter readings on the LISEN Qi2.2 25W power bank show the power bank side of this. Wired to a phone it averaged 23.5W and peaked at 33.2W; to an iPad, 23.9W average and 35.75W peak. LISEN supplied the unit free.

It also offered 63W over USB-C at full charge and cut that to 34W as it emptied, so the fastest charging comes while the bank is full.

The EU USB-C rule

Under the EU common charger rules, USB-C became the required charging port for phones, tablets, cameras, headphones, speakers, handheld consoles, e-readers, keyboards, mice and navigation devices from December 28, 2024, and for laptops from April 28, 2026.

Battery life

How many charge cycles does a phone battery last?

The phone battery statistics people quote come in two kinds: a maker’s design target and a generic cell figure.

Apple states that iPhone 15 model batteries are designed to retain 80 percent of original capacity at 1,000 complete charge cycles under ideal conditions, and iPhone 14 models and earlier at 500.

Battery University puts a generic lithium-ion cell charged to 4.20V at 300 to 500 cycles, and says each 0.10V cut in charge voltage roughly doubles that. Its depth-of-discharge table counts a cell as worn out at 70 percent capacity, a lower bar than Apple’s 80.

So the two don’t contradict each other. One is a phone maker’s target for its own battery and charging system; the other is what a standard cell does when charged to the top every time.

Keep reading

Where this page’s readers usually go next

Browse all our charging guides.

Guide

Can you take a power bank on a plane?

The rules for 25 airlines, each checked against the carrier’s own policy page.

Read the guide ›

Tool

mAh to Wh calculator

Check any power bank against the 100Wh carry-on limit in ten seconds.

Open the calculator ›

Guide

How long does a power bank last?

Charges per bank, years of life, and the Wh math behind both.

Read the guide ›

Roundup

The best power banks you can buy

Every pick is under the 100Wh carry-on limit, so anything here flies.

Read the roundup ›

Figures on this page come from UL Standards and Engagement, the FAA, the CPSC, the European Commission, iFixit, Apple, Battery University and IEEE Spectrum, linked where each is first mentioned. See how we test and score.

Quick answers

Lithium ion battery fire statistics: your questions, answered

The questions readers ask most, with the direct answer first.