Inner Packaging Limits in IATA

When it comes to the transportation of dangerous goods, understanding the inner packaging limits set by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) is essential for compliance and safety. IATA outlines specific guidelines that dictate how items should be packaged to prevent damage and ensure safe handling during air transit.

To comply with IATA regulations, shippers must carefully assess their products and adhere to these limits when preparing shipments. This involves not only knowing the maximum quantities allowed for outer packaging, but also ensuring that all inner packaging limits are followed and secured within their outer containers. Failure to follow these guidelines can result in significant penalties, including fines or shipment delays.

Understanding Inner Packaging Limits for Combination Packaging

As always when you are shipping by air, you should look at The List of Dangerous Goods in IATA at Section 4.2 to help you find the specific dangerous goods you are looking to ship, and which packing instruction to reference when trying to determine the inner packaging limits. Let’s say you are shipping UN1263 PG II paint in 20 metal pint (16 0z.) cans as an example. In column J, it says that the maximum net quantity per package is 5 liters if you are shipping on a passenger/cargo aircraft. However, to verify the correct inner packaging limits, you would have to go to packing instruction 353 as specified in column I. Here it breaks down the inner packaging limits per type of inner packaging. In our shipment, since we are shipping metal inner containers, it says we cannot exceed 5 liters per inner packaging and 5 liters net quantity per outer packaging total. Since each inner container is one pint (16 ounces), we are under the 5-liter threshold for inner packaging in this case. But we would not be able to ship all of cans inside the same outer package as we have to be careful not to exceed the 5 liters total net quantity per package.

Now if we are looking to ship all 20 of these pint metal cans in the same box, we would have to look at the cargo aircraft only limits referenced in packing instruction 364, which would allow for up to 10 Liters for inner metal packaging and up to 60 liters total net quantity per package below.

In this case I would recommend ICC’s 4G UN Pint Can Shipping Kit – 20 x 1 Pint (with cans), as all 20 metal pint cans would not only fit in the box, but it would be compliant per the limits above. As long as you add the cargo aircraft only label next to the appropriate hazard class label, you would be good to go.

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