The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration announced today that lithium-ion batteries or batteries are prohibited from being stored as cargo on passenger planes. Nor can companies ship batteries charged more than 30% on cargo planes.

It won't directly affect most consumers - you can still keep spare batteries and electronics in your carry-on bag.

But people who buy batteries online may be affected. Mobile phones, external batteries and general electronic equipment will no longer be fully charged when they arrive, so as to avoid the risk of fire or explosion during flight and damage to the aircraft.

In 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) urged global airlines to reconsider whether to allow batteries to be used in flight because of the risk of fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) carried out 10 tests, loading a charged laptop into a suitcase and testing various situations in which the battery might catch fire. One example is a can of dry shampoo tied to a laptop. A fire broke out immediately and the can exploded in 40 seconds.

A few months before the study, the Department of Homeland Security banned tablets and laptops from eight Muslim-majority countries.

But in this case, it requires people to check their batteries instead of carrying them with them. The decision involved concerns about the entry of explosives into aircraft.

Most notoriously, airlines prohibit passengers from carrying Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on commercial flights because of battery failures that cause equipment to catch fire, in some cases explosions.