Welcome back to the friendly skies, where the seats are shrinking, the water is overpriced, and you are officially the primary safety hazard. The latest performance in the long-running theater of aviation security comes to us courtesy of a little smoke in an Air Busan overhead bin. One power bank decided to self-immolate in South Korea, and now, the global airline industry—led by the ever-sanctimonious Lufthansa—is treating your portable charger like a rogue nuclear warhead.

Let’s look through the PR fog, shall we? This isn’t just about ‘minimizing risk.’ It’s about the industry’s favorite pastime: liability shifting. By tightening the rules on carriage, airlines ensure that the next time a cheap lithium-ion brick starts a campfire in seat 24B, they can point a manicured finger at the passenger and say, ‘We told them so.’ It’s a brilliant strategy—keep the planes old, the cabin crew overworked, and the blame firmly in the hands of the person paying six hundred dollars for the privilege of being squeezed into a pressurized tube.

Lufthansa is ‘leading the charge’ in Europe, which is corporate-speak for being the first to draft a forty-page policy that nobody will read but everyone will be punished for. It’s peak irony, really. We live in an era where airlines have systematically removed every form of complimentary entertainment, forcing us to rely on our own devices to survive an eight-hour haul over the Atlantic. But now, the very tool required to keep those devices alive is being treated as contraband. They want you to use their shitty, proprietary Wi-Fi that barely loads a text message, but heaven forbid you bring the juice to power the tablet you’re forced to use because the seatback screen has been broken since the Bush administration.

Expect more of this. More gate agents eyeing your backpack with the suspicion normally reserved for international jewel thieves. More announcements delivered in that flat, condescending tone reminding you that your desire for a full battery is a threat to global stability. It’s not about fire; it’s about control. And if they can make you feel like a criminal for wanting to finish a movie before you hit the tarmac in Frankfurt, then for the airlines, it’s a mission accomplished. Buckle up, folks. It’s going to be a long, powerless flight.