TomMM

My point is that for US-EU flights, the infrastructure for screening for devices is already in place at the existing TSA checkpoints. All they have to do is reprint the posters with the newly banned items. This also has the benefit of implementing a ban for all domestic flights. A person brings a banned device to a checkpoint, they get turned away. Easy.

The only gotcha is for people flying to a non-banned country but hey, that's the price you pay when visiting the USA.

JakiChan

You realize that it will never work, right? How in the world can you expect some TSA agent to determine that the USB-C port on my Nintendo Switch is operating properly?

All of the proposed standards will make air travel so much more unattractive than it is now that I suspect there would be no easier way to kick the world economy into recession. And yet again, the "security experts" do the terrorists jobs for them.

I will object to another bailout of airlines. Strongly.

Translation: "We know this is bull *bleep*, and when forced to try and sleep in the bed we're creating we don't want to."

The fact that we're not already doing it means that they know it's bull.

GUWonder

BRU airport attack -- using bombs in luggage while on landside baggage carts showed that point you made in the second sentence above. Ban luggage carts at foreign airports? With US DHS/TSA, the ridiculous is always possible in their policies and practices.

The way to deal with the risk of contraband explosives on planes causing a security incident is to better detect explosives and thereby interdict them -- even on and for domestic US and US-originating flights. A ban on electronic devices of most sorts in hand luggage does nothing to help better detect bombs and thereby secure flights.

Boggie Dog

Puffers. Of course TSA demonstrated the agency is incapable of maintaining this type of device

studentff

The unfortunate likelihood is that the flights won't survive long enough to divert. Or ditch. Uncontrolled fire in the cargo hold is probably the scariest thing possible on an aircraft, including scarier than a bomb which might be survivable depending on location and size. Uncontrolled fire will not be survivable unless it happens just a few minutes before landing.

I can't find the citation, but I believe there were 10-20 lithium battery fires in aircraft cabins in 2016 alone. Extinguished by pax/crew and no fatalities. The risk of explosives in laptops may be real, but the risk of these fires is way more real.

Every paranoid government bureaucrat considering this restriction should be required to read the complete accident reports for Swissair 111 and Valuejet 592. And preferably speak with families of the victims who are still grieving.

The risk of explosives in electronics is not new. We survived the Pan Am 103 era without knee-jerk over-reactive bans. I was a kid then, but I was paying attention and even doing a transatlantic round-trip in the weeks before and after. It's only in the last 16 years or so that the government (and by extension probably the people) have become so cowardly. The generation that won World War II would never have allowed it to come to this.

NickP 1K

Reality may be that electronics you want to take have to go through a similar check you do on a secondary. Prove they function and explosive trace detection (ETD) as is done to today only for secondary. Rolling that to all electronics would greatly slow down screening but the alternative of "no electronics" is likely a no starter for anything but an immediate ban period to get time to roll in more equipment for ETD testing

KDS

I travel with two laptops -- personal and work. Cannot access work network with personal laptop; won't put personal stuff on work laptop. Not going to be a good situation for work travel.

wco81

If there's a case to be made for these draconian measures, they sure aren't making it to the public.

We're suppose to trust that the threat is non-significant, compared to other risks like lithium battery fires.

GrayAnderson

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org...dent_chart.pdf

8 "incidents" in Jan/Feb 2017, 32 in 2016, 17 in 2015, 9 in 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012, 7 in 2011, 6 in 2010, 6 in 2009, 6 in 2008...but also, a number of these involved the device(s) being plugged in at the time or something being done to them (like the iPhone that broke when it got jammed in a seat) while some others weren't actually on an airplane (I see at least one or two 2016 incidents involving fires at the airport). Still, looking at the spike in the last two years (and considering the risk that there might end up being another "problem phone" or a "problem tablet" in the future) suggests that there's a good chance we'd be looking at somewhere in the range of a half-dozen baggage compartment fires per year.

GUWonder

The highly profitable US3 airline industry cartel kingpins could invest in fire/bomb-containing containers to reduce the odds of a problem arising from battery fires and explosions in the plane hold, but the US airlines seem to have other things to do with their money than spend it on that.

mywanderlust

There's a good chance that someone checks a device that's plugged into a portable charger. Now what? (Are portable chargers even allowed in checked luggage?)

NickP 1K

Not supposed to be but they likely do get check in.

guflyer

I know that they are banned in some Asian countries. My colleague was flying from a Thailand airport and learned that three other passengers on the plane were paged and required to take their portable chargers out of their checked bag and to carry them on with them.

I was impressed with how thorough that the screening was, since the chargers were so small and they were able to spot them and ask them to be taken out of bags containing all sorts of other things.

wco81

I've been putting a rechargeable bluetooth speaker in my checked bags, because I already have a lot of electronics in my carryon bags.

It's about 5 inches by 3 inches by 2.5 inches.

studentff

Thanks for the link. I hope everyone looking at this ban in an official capacity has that file and reads it. To me this incident on 12/3/2016 is a fantastic representative of the problem:

Laptop computer, in overhead bin and not in use, exhausted multiple fire extinguishers applied by crew directly to the fire before going out. IMO if that laptop had been in the hold there likely would have been 100% fatalities on a widebody aircraft (based on the "J" seat).

16 years of TSA/DHS paranoia has been bad enough, but if they go through with this ban they almost certainly will have innocent civilian American blood on their hands.