Will We See a Total Ban on Personal Electronics in Airline Cabins?

[mountaineer]

Will We See a Total Ban on Personal Electronics in Airline Cabins?
George Hobica
Airfare Watchdog
April 12, 2017

When the electronics ban was introduced recently for nonstop flights from various Middle Eastern countries to the U.S. and Britain, there was much understandable confusion. Why wasn’t it a universal ban? Why was it only in one direction (inbound to the U.S. and U.K.). Why was it only on nonstop flights? Why was it applied to some Muslim-majority countries and not others? And why was it suddenly “safe” for the electronics, with their sometimes unstable lithium-ion batteries, to be stowed in baggage holds if they were so dangerous in the cabin?

Were the U.S. and Britain targeting certain religious groups, and certain airlines such as Etihad, Emirates, and Qatar, since they were the only ones flying nonstop flights from the affected countries, much to the delight of Air France, Delta, and other airlines that would benefit from passengers booking flights from the Middle East via Europe or other connections?

That conspiracy theory sounded plausible to some, but it’s nonsense. First, the people who try to keep us safe when we fly would have loved to apply a universal ban, and perhaps they still will, but doing so would have crippled the aviation industry if imposed without warning all at once, so they did the next best thing and applied the ban selectively to the countries where, they believed, terrorists would most likely begin their journeys. Yes, it was a form of profiling, I suppose.

Second, the airlines that might “benefit” from the ban (those without nonstop flights from the affected countries) aren’t especially happy, either. As Alex Cruz, the CEO of British Airways explained to me recently, “we do not want to have 200 laptop and other electronic items in our cargo holds.”  That’s because lithium-ion batteries are notorious for instability. Plus, airlines would have to (and may still have to, one day) hire hundreds of new check-in agents and baggage handlers to process all those bags. The aviation industry was simply not ready for this.  Plus, the airlines will be seeing more claims for lost, damaged, and stolen property (although they notoriously refuse to be liable for “valuables,” which includes electronics).

As to why it’s “safer” for electronics to be stowed rather than carried in the cabin, the theory is that while there might not be enough room to stuff the components of a bomb (power supply, timer, transmitter, explosive material, etc.) into just one piece of equipment, a terrorist could assemble a device from components stuffed into two or more pieces (a camera, a laptop, a portable printer, and a mobile phone) if allowed to carry all those items in the cabin.

It’s probably only a matter of time before a laptop bomb plot is either thwarted at the last minute or it succeeds (it’s already happened, actually, but because it was a Somali airline and the only injury was the terrorist himself, who was sucked out of the plane, which landed safely, few noticed); if it happens again, however, we can expect a full electronics ban to be implemented. ...

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