May 11, 2017

Travel Thursday: My Thoughts on the Extended Laptop Ban

I’ve been thinking for a while about writing more about the airline industry. While I do feature lots of travel industry news in my Sunday Links I Love series, I never thought most of you would be interested in that kind of content. But customer experience for travel and transportation is my field of specialization at work, and news in that space has been quite a mainstream topic these days! Yesterday, I posted on Instagram (follow me here) about the forthcoming announcement of the extension of the laptop ban to transatlantic European flights. That story got more comments than anything I’ve previously shared… so I thought perhaps it was time to blog about my thoughts.

(Since this is the industry in which I work, I’d like to start by making it clear that the opinions I’m about to share do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my firm or my colleagues, many of whom have differing views.)

Let’s start by going back to February 2016, when a plane took off from Mogadishu, Somalia… and exploded 20 minutes later when a laptop bomb went off on board. While that’s pretty scary, flight 159 was pretty lucky: while the alleged bomber was killed, the pilot was able to make an emergency landing and save everyone else on board. It’s widely believed that this luck was due to a flight delay – had the plane taken off when it was supposed to, the bomb (which was detonated with a timer device) would have exploded at a higher altitude and killed everyone on board. Two weeks later, Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab took credit for the attack. And six weeks ago, a U.S. intelligence source said that a recent raid on Al Qaeda in Yemen indicated that terrorists have refined this concept and developed bombs that fit seamlessly into the battery compartments of laptops… but need to be manually triggered. Cue the ban on laptops flying from ten airports in the Middle East/Africa to the U.S., and then eight airports in the Middle East/Africa to the UK.

April_2016_Cabin_Ban_On_Electronic_Devices_To_UK_and_US
Image source: BBC News

At first, a lot of industry insiders were skeptical that the ban was truly a result of a security threat. The fact that it didn’t affect any US carriers (as none fly nonstop to the US from the affected airports) seemed like a thinly-veiled protectionism measure for US carriers who are frequently annoyed by Etihad, Emirates, and other state-subsidized carriers encroaching on their turf. When the UK joined in the ban, it gave the threat a bit more credibility. We still don’t know the details of the threat other than that anonymous source I linked above, and I don’t expect intelligence to reveal what’s going on just to satisfy everyone’s curiosity. But now that the ban is potentially being extended to flights going from Europe to the US (a fairly logical expansion of the ban, given the connecting flight loophole as well as the fact that Europe is known to have some terrorist cells who have carried out attacks there), it will hit the US carriers pretty hard – so I can’t imagine this would be done without reason.

When the ban was first announced, it got a ton of press in the industry. Having personal devices for entertainment and work is a hallmark of flying, especially on longer trips. Personally, I can’t imagine flying transatlantic without my laptop or Kindle! Qatar Airways started offering loaner laptops to premium cabin customers affected by the ban, which Etihad followed by offering loaner iPads and free wi-fi to premium cabin customers on flights affected by the ban. But despite these airlines trying to find a way to accommodate and still give passengers the closest facsimile to their normal in-flight experience (and the airlines affected are known for their high-quality customer experience), a few weeks after the ban, Emirates said that their bookings had dropped up to 35%. Yikes!

Throughout all of the articles I’ve seen on this topic, even after the UK joined the ban, most people thought that this laptop ban wouldn’t be expanded beyond the Middle East/Africa. While many agreed that it was kind of a useless ban if it was only from certain airports, it seemed unthinkable that this could become a more expansive policy. But from the beginning, I’ve expected the geographic span to grow (see here and here). Remember back before the summer of 2006, when you could pack your regular-sized toiletries in your carry on without a problem? Eleven years later, we’ve become so used to the 3-1-1 rule that we barely remember the small luxury of taking a giant bottle of sunscreen with us rather than buying it once we get to the beach. A lot can change in policies and norms, and I think this new laptop ban will soon become the new normal.

Oatmeal_3-1-1_Rule
Image source: The Oatmeal

Unfortunately, that has some pretty severe implications – and I don’t mean just boredom for those who want to play games on their iPad in flight. For frequent business travelers, the prospect of being unable to work in flight may cause them to reevaluate the necessity of traveling. I’ve often said that with video conferencing technology being so ubiquitous, a lot of in-person meetings could be avoided – but this ban could be the push needed to start that happening more and more. (Especially as corporate IT departments scramble to figure out safe ways to have their staff check laptops to avoid potential theft of either the equipment or the sensitive data, as many have policies that company electronics cannot be checked.) A decline in business travel would be a huge loss to the airlines, who rely on business travelers paying premium prices to subsidize the dirt cheap economy fares that we’ve all become used to.

And speaking of those economy fares – how many leisure travelers would cancel their trips if they couldn’t easily bring their electronics? Anecdotally, I’ve already had two friends tell me they would cancel their European trips this summer if this ban comes to fruition, and another who was routing through Heathrow to get to Asia and wanted my advice on rerouting. I wouldn’t recommend rerouting any trips you currently have booked, or changing your destination to somewhere the laptop ban isn’t in play. When the ban was first issued between the Middle East/Africa and the U.S., it made sense to reroute via Europe and save some productive time; right now, it could make sense to route via Canada. But I think it’s only a matter of time until this ban is extended to Canada… and beyond. If you’re traveling in the next few days, that could be a viable loophole, but if you’re traveling further than a week or two out, I think changing your flight is going to be a whole lot of hassle that probably won’t amount to any differences in in-flight experience. Instead, check out these tips from Travel Insider on how to secure your data in preparation for the ban.

Beyond being an annoyance to customers and a revenue hit for airlines, this ban also has the potential to be extremely disruptive for the long-haul low-cost carriers who were expected to really shake up the industry in a few months with the delivery of new planes. Norwegian’s business model includes some serious fees to be viable, including a $45 charge for checking a bag, and other low-cost carrier fees are similar. That fee now essentially becomes a $45 fee (each way) to have your electronic devices with you at your destination – which makes it a lot harder to get around than just learning to pack in a carry on. I’ve been pretty psyched for the rise of these low cost carriers to open up new routes at unheard-of prices, but if the economics aren’t viable thanks to lower loads, that’s not going to happen.

For now, the laptop ban hasn’t been expanded… but I think there’s a good chance it will be. Which begs the question: how much are we willing to sacrifice to make flights “safe”? By putting laptops in the cargo hold, we increase the risk of lithium batteries spontaneously combusting in a cargo hold where there’s no one to put them out. And, who’s to say that the terrorist groups planning these attacks won’t quickly develop a way to remotely detonate a laptop bomb that’s complying with the rules by being put inside a checked bag? Do we want to go as far as to say no electronics are allowed anywhere on a plane? I can’t imagine that becoming the new policy… but these days, I wouldn’t even bet against that. I’m no expert on terrorism or security, but I think at some point we need to continue to live our lives and not worry about the one in a million risk that someone might do something terrible.

Thoughts? Questions?

SHARE:

6 thoughts on “Travel Thursday: My Thoughts on the Extended Laptop Ban”

  1. As I mentioned on social media, I leave Sunday for a India run. I chose to route SEA>LHR>HYD (on BA) instead of my normal SEA>DXB>HYD route on Emirates due to the ban. This is a work trip and the thought of checking my work laptop in my checked luggage is terrifying – as is the thought of 21+ hours of flying with nothing by my thoughts and knitting.

    I too thought the ban was originally the thinly veiled attempt at pushing back on the state-subsidized carriers. Banning from the EU carries *way* higher ramifications from a tourism and economy perspective; additionally the callout you have on the impact to the airlines from business travelers will be huge. I’m already looking at SEA>YVR>MUC routes (probably on Condor) for a trip later this summer, rather than SEA>LHR direct on BA. All of that so I can 1) not risk the loss of my laptop and 2) have 10 hours of productivity back.

    1. On the plus side, even if they do announce today and it goes into effect immediately, you have a few days to plan ahead. (In comparison, I had a friend flying the day the liquid ban went into effect and the chaos he described was crazy: people dumping toiletries everywhere!) I think it’s definitely worth checking into your company’s policies if you *were* flying via DXB, just to know what you should do if it’s extended to the LHR-SEA leg on your return. It may also not be a bad idea to pack a really long book for your return? I may need to look into buying stock in Hudson News, haha 🙂

  2. I always travel with a laptop, but I seldom use it in-flight. I just want to have it available at my destination. Is there a safe way to check a laptop?

    1. It depends what you’d like to keep it safe from. Damage? Use a protective case and also pack clothes around it. Physical theft? Use TSA-approved suitcase locks and try to be among the first to baggage claim. (Still not a perfect solution but it can help.) Data theft? Ensure that it’s fully encrypted. The Travel Insider article I linked has more details on all of these steps, and others. Hope that helps!

  3. “at some point we need to continue to live our lives and not worry about the one in a million risk that someone might do something terrible” <– THIS.
    I often feel a lot of security measure in place don't actually cover off the risks. Like, shoes. That's still a US-only thing, and is it truly necessary to remove them? I'd also argue you could absolutely create an explosive device with the limited liquids (I believe in the 80s there was something to do with a contact lens case?) so is the laptop ban just more of the same?.
    Tbh, your industry isn't much different than mine where things are extremely fluid and it's highly impacted by the getopolitical atmosphere. (the same, but still, different).

    1. A lot of the security measures we have in place are more for general comfort that we are doing SOMETHING, rather than actually making things more secure. As a whole, the measures we have in place now have been extremely reactive (e.g., shoes being taken off is because of Richard Reid’s stunt). Flights seem to be more highly regulated than other things, and I’m not entirely sure why. For example, after the truck ramming incident in Nice, there was never a call to ban trucks… even though that tactic was repeated again this year in Sweden.

Leave a Reply to David Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join the List

Subscribe for instant email notification of new posts.

Join the List

Subscribe for instant email notification of new posts.

© 2023 by 50by25. All rights reserved. Actions taken from the hyperlinks on this blog may yield commissions for 50by25. View my FTC disclaimer.

Scroll to Top