A Power Bank Caught Fire on Lufthansa LH1170 to Lisbon, and the A321 Diverted to Lyon

Lufthansa flight LH1170 from Frankfurt to Lisbon diverted to Lyon, France, on Saturday evening, September 26, 2026, after a passenger’s power bank caught fire near a seat. Lufthansa confirmed the incident to the German news agency dpa, which said the aircraft landed safely at around 10 p.m.

There were 198 passengers and six crew on board, according to dpa and The Aviation Herald. The cabin crew secured the power bank in a lithium battery containment bag, and the flight diverted to Lyon as a precaution.

What happened on LH1170

The aircraft was an Airbus A321-200 registered D-AISB, according to the Aviation Herald. It was cruising at 35,000 feet about 70 nautical miles northeast of Lyon when the crew decided to divert.

The A321 landed on runway 17L at Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport about 25 minutes later, the Aviation Herald reported. The airline said the power bank overheated and caught fire in a seat, and dpa reported that the crew diverted for safety reasons after securing it in a Lithium Safe Bag.

Passengers spent the night in hotels in Lyon and were rebooked onto other flights to Lisbon the next day, dpa reported. Neither Lufthansa’s statement to dpa nor the Aviation Herald’s report mentions any injuries.

The jet stayed on the ground in Lyon for about 16 hours and then made a positioning flight back to Frankfurt, the Aviation Herald said. The Aviation Hub lists D-AISB as an A321-231 delivered to Lufthansa in September 1999, which makes it about 27 years old.

The published accounts do not say what kind of power bank it was, or whether it was in use or charging when it caught fire. The incident first surfaced in reports by RTL and Bild before the airline confirmed it to dpa.

Lufthansa already bans power bank use on board

Since January 15, 2026, power banks may neither be used nor charged on Lufthansa Group flights, the group says on its business travel site. The rule covers Lufthansa and the group’s other airlines.

Each passenger may still carry up to two power banks in carry-on baggage. They must stay in the seat pocket, on the passenger’s person or in a bag under the seat, and are not allowed in checked baggage or the overhead bins.

The storage rule matters for events like this one. A power bank in a seat pocket or under a seat is one the crew can see and reach quickly, which is not true of one inside a closed overhead bin.

A ban on use and charging does not take the battery out of the cabin, which is why the rule also says where it must be kept. AeroCorner’s explainer on lithium batteries on planes covers how those failures start.

Why the jet still diverted after the fire was bagged

Putting a burning battery in a containment bag does not end the risk. The FAA’s advisory circular on in-flight fires warns that a fire in one cell of a battery may not yet have spread to the others, but while the device is hot, it still can.

The same guidance tells crews to cool a smoking or overheating device with water or other nonalcoholic liquid, leave it for at least 10 to 15 minutes, then submerge it in a container and monitor it for the rest of the flight. It also warns that a suppressed fire can reestablish itself and grow in a short time.

With most of the trip to Lisbon still ahead, landing at Lyon had the aircraft on the ground about 25 minutes after the crew decided to divert.

Lufthansa’s second Frankfurt diversion that Saturday

dpa called LH1170 the second incident that weekend involving a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. On the same Saturday, LH470 to Toronto turned back over Scotland and landed at Manchester because of an odor in the cabin, with 371 passengers on board, dpa reported.

It is not the first power bank fire to turn a European airline flight around since August. On September 17, KLM flight KL735 to Curacao returned to Amsterdam after a power bank caught fire in business class, and on August 9 a SWISS A330 diverted to Dublin for the same reason.