I don't know. In the first two cases they cleared me as I was within the limits and in the third case they were confused what to do since I had 4 laptops/tablets in the bag and those obviously couldn't be checked in.

ET's usually smooth experience has been getting a bit frayed lately. This evening in Addis they had a major issue with hotel room shortage for transit pax. I was first given a Hilton voucher, which was swapped for a Radisson Blu voucher (but they were full), so they tried to rebook me in "Blue Sky Hotel" which I flatly refused to accept, and then finally gave me a voucher for the Ramada.