Greetings and I had a question I wondered if more frequent travellers around Hawaii could help with.

I have an HA flight LIH to HNL coming up. I connect to an AA flight to PHX later. (I know I have will not be able to have our bags through checked and have allowed enough time.)

I have a laptop which I frequently pack in a secure padded bag which is designed (my work, who supplied it, tell me) for being checked in and I have cheerfully included it in checked baggage on (amongst others) BA, AA, QF and CX. When I was checking in for the flight to LIH from HNL I was asked if the checked baggage contained a laptop and was told to remove it as it was "a fire hazard". This seems odd - are MD-9s/B717s something special? And I can't find anything on the HA website (maybe I didn't look hard enough) about laptops in checked baggage. I wondered if anyone had any experience of this.

Thanks a lot for any experiences.