quillbin

Remember this is only for flights From/To the 13 countries in question. And it screams "Temp. Restriction." It may even be changed to "All devices bigger than a 6" smartphone must be Chem-Swabbed at the checkpoint for the 13 countries in question." Who Knows as DHS hasn't even said anything publicly about it yet.

beachmouse

Reminded me of this incident:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35521646

But I'm one of the many who are not sure how putting such a device in the hold is somehow safer than having it in cabin.

oh_lol

lol crazy

Dr. HFH

Several articles in the NYTimes. The ban applies to all nonstop flights to the U.S. originating in Cairo, Amman, Kuwait City, Casablanca, Doha, Riyadh, Jedda, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It doesn't affect any U.S. airlines because none of them have nonstops from these cities to the U.S. (I think).

I have to wonder if the complaints by DL and others about unfair advantage of Middle East carriers played into this at all given President Trump's stated intention to give advantages to U.S. businesses.

Will be interesting to see how AAB responds. This will wreak havoc with his expansion strategy, a huge piece of which is increasing the number of U.S. cities to which QR flies nonstop.

Bound to affect Boeing, too.

And laptops in checked bags are bound to become bait for baggage theft, even with TSA locks, no?

So now what do we all do with the nonrefundable tickets we just bought during the great QR sales? I'm not doing anything until I see how QR handles it; but it might end up being cheaper to buy an extra laptop and leave it at the other end.

el aye

Oh most definitely. Camera equipment, too. This seems rather ridiculous considering you aren't supposed to check lithium batteries at all either, or transport them outside of the device they are in (unless you have the proper packaging to prevent shorts -- which most travelers probably don't have).

GUWonder

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8cd63...-bound-flights

That's only 8 countries on this ban list, all in the MENA:

1. Egypt
2. Jordan
3. Kuwait
4. Morocco
5. Qatar
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Turkey
8. UAE

The US3 and EU3 cartel kingpin airlines going to complain about this ban? I doubt it, they dislike competition and want the passenger traffic to go via Europe rather than circumvent them via the MENA.

KRSW

eBay. Used Lenovo Thinkpads or Dell Latitudes. For most of what people do, even an ancient laptop will do the job. If you have stable internet, you can always remote into your home location computer and let it do all the heavy lifting.

I'm not sure what TSA is thinking on this. Risk-wise, having all of those unprotected lithium-ions bouncing around in cargo is far worse than terrorists. As others have pointed out, it's nothing to book two separate tickets and connect in an "approved" country, bypassing this ban.

We need to ban bans.

Global321

US carriers are exempt. (Source: CNN)

This seems like a very thinly veiled attempt to hit the middle east big 3, as each of their home bases is on the list.

Hard to believe this is a security issue.... fly a US carrier, no problem, devices welcome. Fly a foreign carrier on the same route, put it in the cargo hold. (Which, as others have stated, does not provide much if any, additional security.)

Also, wonder how this will work at the airport. Tomorrow, we will be connecting in DOH from Asia. (Asia-DOH-LAX) Where are we to surrender our laptops?

Before our flight in Asia? No way Asia airports will be setup for that. Also, some people will have laptops on the flight. (At DOH, there is typically no security screening for flights from Asia until the USA flight.)

Wait until the USA extra screening in DOH? THAT would be a mess!!! And how will that work, assuming you checked your bag in Asia, you check your laptop bag?

chucko

Where in the Times? I haven't found a single article on the subject on their Web site.

alanR

I could understand it if the ban was on Android devices as it's well known terrorists don't use Apple devices

redadeco

"The ban applies to all nonstop flights to the U.S. originating in Cairo, Amman, Kuwait City, Casablanca, Doha, Riyadh, Jedda, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi and Dubai."

Clearly racial profiling. Every Muslim-majority country with flights to the US is targeted.

There are now talks about Arab countries shutting their US embassies.

NYTA

There are a number of reasons to stop flying TK but I guess this is the last straw. I almost booked a ticket on TK for April, but ended up on DL so I guess I inadvertently made the right choice. I'm all for better security but this is just idiotic. If there's an inside job from the ground crew this won't matter. The Sharm El Sheik flight got brought down by a bomb in a soda can smuggled by the ground crew.

tcmb99

TK announced they received no ban yet and their security checks have not changed as of today.

This is all very new, also it might end up being a very short ban if some court decides to rule against it. With US airlines being exempt, I would expect that ruling to happen very quickly.

So before we all go out there and buy some walmart laptops I think it is a good idea to keep calm and wait it out unless you have a flight tomorrow and your airline makes a specific announcement.

RumPatrol

It is fascinating to me that the airlines that fly these routes are all national and/or state owned airlines of countries that the United States is allied with in some form or another. I could *maybe* understand Egypt because of ongoing concerns regarding civil aviation security, but even that is a stretch. The UAE? Jordan? Morocco? Come on.

I'm far more concerned about having things stolen from checked baggage or having improperly packed or loaded baggage deciding to catch on fire than I've ever been about terrorism.

If someone is capable of sneaking a bomb-laden electronic device through passenger security, they sure as heck are capable of getting it through checked baggage security. At least if they are in the passenger cabin maybe it could be identified and stopped ie the shoe bomber, a bomb going off in the hold is pretty much the end. It is far more likely that a low wage ground worker will be paid off to plant something in the hold anyway. A paid off baggage worker is how the bomb got on the MetroJet disaster that led to Russia's ban of Egyptian flights to begin with, a ban I'm sure this is partially based on. It's far easier to do that than it would be trying to sneak through security with something these days.

That's all without even getting into the logistics of this. Like the post above mentioned, what about people who are connecting through DXB, AUH or DOH from Asia or Australia? What about all the Americans returning home from business trips to the Gulf? I'd imagine that's a big chunk of the people flying some of these routes. I wouldn't want to be the one to tell them no laptop to pass the 13-14 hours.

Carfield

How will this ban affect Emirates' fifth-freedom flights, like the DXB-MXP-JFK, and DXB-ATH-EWR?

I presume that these flights will not be affected because there is a stop in Europe! They are not nonstop flights.

Carfield