Southwest Airlines now bans passengers from bringing humanoid or animal-like robots on board.
An article on the Southwest help center website says the carrier prohibits robots that resemble people or animals, or imitate their movement or behavior, “regardless of size or purpose.”
Other types of robots, the airline said, have to fit in a carry-on bag and comply with Southwest’s battery restrictions.
“We have had a handful of recent experiences in which customers either bought seats for devices or tried to carry them on as baggage. One led to a flight delay, which has been making headlines. The primary concern is with the size of the lithium-ion batteries used to power them and the risk they pose during flight,” a Southwest spokesperson told CNN.
Aaron Mehdizadeh, who owns Dallas-based robot rental company The Robot Studio, said on X that the ban came after he brought his company’s robot Stewie onto a Southwest flight from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas to Dallas Love Field on May 10.
Southwest’s battery policy limits customers to one powerbank or portable charger that doesn’t exceed 100 watt hours and says passengers must carry the battery and show it openly if it’s in use.
Mr. Mehdizadeh alleges that Southwest used a picture of Stewie in an internal communique to employees about the new robot policy as an example of what to look out for.
He said Stewie’s battery was a “custom lithium pack” with only 94 watt hours and that it was compliant with Federal Aviation Administration rules.
He also told Dallas’ KTVT that the Southwest restrictions shouldn’t apply, because “the battery we used is essentially a laptop battery.”
On April 30, another Southwest flight from Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport to San Diego International Airport was delayed for an hour after someone with a different Dallas-based robot rental company tried bringing a humanoid robot named Bebop on a flight.
A Southwest spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times that “the device’s lithium battery exceeded the maximum allowable size, so the customer was asked to remove it.”
Eily Ben-Abraham, who accompanied Bebop on board, told San Francisco’s KGO-TV that “they come and start asking, what kind of batteries does it have? What’s going on with this? X, Y and Z. They want to see it.”
Mr. Ben-Abraham, who works for Dallas-based Elite Event Robotics, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Bebop was too heavy altogether to be stored under the plane and that he hadn’t encountered any issues flying with Bebop from Texas to California initially.
The batteries for Bebop were confiscated, Elite Event Robotics said on Instagram, and is trying to get them back.
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