TOKYO — Passengers on Air Mobility Command flights face no new restrictions on what they may bring aboard in the wake of a new crop of laptop computer battery recalls, military air transport officials in Japan and South Korea have said.
Spokesmen at Osan Air Base, South Korea, and Yokota Air Base, Japan, said Friday that AMC officials follow U.S. aviation regulators’ lead on restricting what passengers may bring aboard.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration and National Transportation Safety Board issued no warnings after the latest recall, and no commercial airlines had added laptop restrictions as of Friday night.
On Thursday, Lenovo recalled about 500,000 ThinkPad laptops carrying Sony-brand lithium-ion batteries suspected of causing fires. Lenovo controls the personal-computing division of IBM, maker of ThinkPad.
The recall follows an incident last weekend in Los Angeles in which a ThinkPad laptop ignited on a plane before takeoff, according to company reports.
Problems with Sony batteries have been cited in two other recalls. In August, for the same fire hazard, Dell recalled 4.1 million Sony laptop batteries and Apple 1.8 million more.
In the aftermath of the August recalls, three airlines — none of them U.S. carriers — limited or banned laptop use on flights.
How to get ThinkPad batteries replaced
Lenovo, the manufacturer of IBM ThinkPad computers, issued this statement about its battery recall: “Lenovo and IBM Corporation, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies, have announced the voluntary recall of certain lithium-ion batteries manufactured by Sony Corporation.
In the interest of public safety, Lenovo will offer customers free-of-charge replacement batteries for all recalled batteries.”
The batteries were sold between February 2005 and September 2006 in the following systems:
ThinkPad R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e).ThinkPad T Series (T43, T43p, T60).ThinkPad X Series (X60, X60s).Customers who ordered an extra battery or received a replacement battery for any ThinkPad T4x or ThinkPad R5x Series notebook computer during that time frame may also have a battery under recall, the statement said.
The statement advised laptop users with the recalled battery to remove the battery and power the computer using an AC adapter.
For more information and instructions for getting a replacement battery, visit: http://www.ibm.com/...
— Juliana Gittler
