dakaix

BA1's stop in SNN is sadly irrelevant. AUH also has a preclearance facility and isn't excluded from the current ban.

T8191

With my only extant US-bound booking ex-DUB, I shall await the promulgation of accurate details before getting in a froth.

But it's certainly already affecting our future 'vacation' thinking. I susepct the US enonomy will survive without us.

Tobias-UK

Here's an article by Simon Calder in The Independent. From the sources he's quoting the decision appears not to have been made ... but of course politicians are involved.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...-a7729511.html

markle

deleted

chucko

I bought a Pelican case after the liquids scare (was that 10 years ago?), when you weren't allowed anything in the cabin other than your passport and boarding pass. They're pretty widely used and don't stand out that much. Check-in people ask me if I'm carrying tools, even though I usually use it for transporting bottles of wine. I might have to use it next week if this goes into effect, but only for camera bodies - you can take the lenses on board, and at least you'll cut some of your losses in the event of theft.

I'll probably skip taking a laptop, as I thought loading up the baggage hold with lith batteries was held to be a Dumb Idea. Any ban on spare camera batts is also unwelcome, I'll end up like one of those pathetic iThing owners who can't seem to pause for more than 15 seconds without looking for a place to plug in their charger.

Methinks

My concern isn't about not working on flights. I rarely do. I'm concerned about the the checked laptop being stolen.

Like another commenter, our laptops are highly customized. Since the laptops are custom built they take days to replace even if replacement is possible (highly unlikely) and then they require at least another day for our tech team to configure them.

A friend of mine (in a different business) stuck his laptop in checked luggage and it was stolen.

I wonder if there is a service that would ship your laptop to your European destination. Perhaps DHL?

rufflesinc

The software is customized, you can backup an image of your hard drive to the cloud.

mmxbreaks

Hear it's not just laptops, but cameras too.

I feel it's a dangerous plan. Shed loads of unattended li-ion batteries in the hold. Good one.

NWIFlyer

CNN was giving this some coverage last night, although as others have said the main news concentration is on the sacking of the FBI Director so it's merely a tiny pimple so far over the pond - which may somewhat mitigate any volume loss in traffic originating in the US.

Nonetheless, the CNN take is that they expect the EU to push back strongly on this - they suggest talks have been requested, which may well delay any announcement.

GrayAnderson

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC in the case of Daallo (that was the one in Somalia a few years back) I recall reading in the BBC that the hull breach managed to eject the guy who set off the explosion.

I'll say that if there were an airport (or airports) where screening was known to be problematic, I could see doing something about those airports [1]...but seemingly scattershot bans (or blanket bans) seem to be quite the overkill measure. One problem (among many) I have with the prospect of a blanket ban is the overall "don't check valuables" advice I've always heard. I also suspect that the risk of a laptop battery catching fire in the hold far exceeds the chance of a plane being taken down by an onboard battery.

The net result of this is that I'm going to start running my overseas travel through Canada. I fully expect to become quite familiar with YUL, YYZ, and YVR over the next few years at this rate.

[1] The inclusion of AUH was particularly contemptible considering that it's a pre-clearance airport. With due disrespect to DHS and the TSA, if running folks through Customs and Immigration as well as security is insufficient then why in the holy frakking hell are you bothering to station people on the other side of the world to bother with that?

kileysmom

Pelican cases are on sale on Amazon US and UK - at least some models.

Smid

It seems as the recent protectionism which seemed to be a theme of both the brexit and trump campaign might be exhibiting itself in unexpected ways. The world is becoming a little smaller, and something like this will have a huge impact on business more than tourism...

Stewie Mac

hmm - I found out this morning that the off-airport car parking drop-off and pickup at T2 has been moved from level 2 to level 4.

Nothing very interesting in itself, but it happened on Wednesday morning. And the operators were informed of it on Tuesday night.

Which strikes me as the sort of very rapid shuffling which would be required if they (HAL) have to sort out a load of extra gate security with only hours official notice...

lhrsfo

The especially irritating thing about this mooted ban is that it's westbound, when I want to use my laptop for work and for catching up on iPlayer. If it were eastbound, then I wouldn't really care.

But I do believe that aspects of it are highly political - after all, the US and UK share the same intelligence and included different airports in their bans. And the US does the security for US-bound flights in AUH so, if US security isn't good enough there (or in DUB for that matter), why is it good enough in the US?

lhrsfo

That's ominous. The announcement was rumoured to be yesterday but nothing happened. So perhaps today? It's going to be a major problem for the UK Government as there are huge policy angles here, and the Government is currently in Purdah because of the election.