And by portable I mean with a built-in battery. I see tons of Huawai and ZTE 4G hotspots that could be used as a router if you think outside the box, but none are OpenWRT compatible. Netgear Nighthawk M1 to M6 are another example.
Searched through this forum, but it seems we don't have a single portable router that works with OpenWRT. Or am I wrong?
My opinion on this is that an OpenWrt-supported travel router from GL.iNet (or similar) with an external USB battery from Anker (or similar) would make more sense than a "portable" router with a built-in battery.
While the external battery is slightly more cumbersome, it gives you a lot more options. You can get whatever size/capacity you want, have choices about charging speed, and can even keep a spare on hand.
If the battery is built-in, you lose those options. You're stuck with whatever size and charging speed the manufacturer decides on, which is usually based more on accounting (i.e. cheap junk) than user satisfaction.
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Exactly - GL.iNet seems the way to go. The newest and most capable is GL-MT3000. It's already on stable OpenWrt. There are older models, much smaller and lighter, but with slower WiFi and older hardware. Depending on what you want to do, these might be a good option as well.
What sent me down this particular rabbit hole was my recent 5hr long flight with my wife and two kids on a plane with no entertainment system. I couldn’t bring myself to pay for four connections and we ended up talking, looking at photos, laughing, and playing silly offline games. All that could easily have been avoided if I had a small router that are like €15 used. Knowing myself I wouldn’t log around aforementioned combo, but something the size of tp-link m7000 - maybe. I don’t need speed. Two clients watching Disney plus and one browsing Amazon will not strain even that outdated model.
I think a lot of people would consider that a win. 
But now I'm confused... is it even legal to run your own hotspot on a flight?
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I’m sure there is a forum somewhere on the internet where lawyers are discussing just that and someone asks if it’s even technically possible to run your own hotspot on a flight.
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It's absolutely technically possible. That's not even a question.
The issue is whether the airline will prosecute you for doing so. I genuinely don't know, but I sure wouldn't try it without finding out first (because my first guess is "yes"). Airlines can afford a lot more legal firepower than I can.
Valid point, but let’s stay on track. Are there any devices in that class that can run OpenWRT, or it hasn’t been done before?
Wha is wrong with a Hame Router or cheep chinease equivelent. Shame this has not been updated. Or even https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32887453905.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.29.569d522bdMb5d7&algo_pvid=ddb29eed-d7aa-4053-a38a-1e76213bfca5&algo_exp_id=ddb29eed-d7aa-4053-a38a-1e76213bfca5-14&pdp_npi=4%40dis!SEK!406.22!231.46!!!38.40!21.88!%40211b61ae17087197720865553e3479!65694477218!sea!SE!0!AB&curPageLogUid=z3DW2uXDxvfj&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch|query_from%3A
?
Commercial WiFi networks often have a feature to detect and actively jam "rogue" access points. It is likely that is active on a plane.
The Hame box doesn't say how much RAM / flash it has. The GL-Inet Mango is under $30 and has enough memory for full OpenWrt support.
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This is often true. But if you don't have anything better to do, trying to trick that enterprise crap to submission on a cheapo router could be fun. Probaby laptop would be useful.
@Solomon there's also an easier way. Some (all?) devices with recent Android versions have a way to become routers by switching some toggles. You join the upstream WiFi network and simultaneously start a personal hotspot, or however it's called on Android these days. It seems that the industry hasn't caught up with that yet, last I read about this.
...one thing I would not recommend on a plane, would be playing with weird devices with cables and antennas sticking out of it...
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I don’t see myself attracting a whole lot of attention with something like this
For this specific purpose, is there a reason why it needs to run OpenWrt? Seems like a few of the devices that you mentioned should be able to do what you want out of the box.
Fair, I don’t need OpenWRT for the scenario I mentioned, anything that can work as a range extender should work out of the box. But if I ever need to share a cell signal the same way I might need to fiddle with the TTL and that is easier to do with OpenWRT. But even then I am probably better off with an old Android phone, as was already suggested… I guess I expected the open source community to be as exited about the small form factor as I am 