Wired reports that Virgin Atlantic Airways is not only forbidding non-plugged use of Apple and Dell notebooks on board their airplanes, bu the batteries have to be wrapped and checked:

Virgin Atlantic Airways is restricting the use of Apple and Dell laptops and their Sony-manufactured batteries on its flights. The restrictions are in response the August recalls of millions of batteries used in the two companies' notebook computers due to a risk of overheating and fire, and it affects owners of Inspirons, Lattitudes, iBooks, PowerBooks, MacBooks or MacBook Pros. Virgin will allow customers to use these laptops, but only with seat-side power supplies (if you're flying coach, too bad). The batteries must be wrapped and confined to the owners carry-on luggage and kept separate from the computer. Korean Air recently imposed similar restrictions on laptops using Sony batteries. Virgin said they'd lift the restrictions "as soon as this safety issue is resolved."

If that spreads to other major carriers, I think we'll see a lot of very unhappy business travelers. Makes me glad that I'm carrying a Thinkpad, but that was a sheer luck of the draw thing - Cincom was equipping us with Dell notebooks a few years back. This is one to keep your eye on if you travel by air.

Technorati Tags: batteries, recall