Last Wednesday morning Turkish Airlines received its clearance from the US Department of Homeland Security to end the prohibition of large electronics in the passenger cabin. As the ban is lifted across Turkish and other carriers (Etihad, Emirates, Kuwait Airways, Royal Jordanian, Qatar Airways as of this afternoon) plenty of questions remain. We won’t get answers to most of them, of course, but Turkish sent out a release with some of the numbers around the ban. And I’m a big fan of numbers.
Dear Passengers, #WelcomeOnBoard to our US-bound flight. Please fasten your seatbelts and enjoy your own electronic devices. pic.twitter.com/WbcZwNPhrf
— Turkish Airlines (@TurkishAirlines) July 4, 2017
Here’s the breakdown from the company:
During 102 days, 81,736 electronic devices were carefully collected from our passengers at gates by our staff and carried in overprotected baggage on 1,087 flights to the US. 75% of devices were laptops and tablets. 25% of devices consisted of cameras, GPS devices and e-books.
That’s 10-11 flights per day and 75 devices per flight, on average. Just over 50 laptops or tablets were checked in the cargo bin on each flight based on these numbers (and, no, I have no idea what “overprotected baggage” means). And, fortunately, zero battery fires in the cargo hold. Conveniently, the company did not mention any hard costs associated with staffing for this.
I’m slightly surprised that the number of laptops was that low, though I also suppose that at some point passengers were either booking away from the affected airlines, checking the devices prior to the gate or leaving them at home. Either way, the ban is quickly falling by the wayside, though Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia remain affected today.
Another thing I haven’t quite figured out is how the UK was so quick to follow in banning large electronics (though not from all the same countries/airports) but has chosen to not relax the ban even as US authorities declare that the changes made are sufficient. They’re supposedly working from the same intelligence data and yet came up with impressively different policies that still don’t quite line up.
Read More:
- Airport Security Theatre: A play in two parts
- Airlines, Google speak frankly about electronics ban surprise, solutions
- Customer service leads the way as airlines cope with electronics ban
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interesting! they were still collecting stats afaict on sunday (guy made a note in a paper i had 1 tablet and 1 laptop)
“Overprotected” is basically multiple layers of packaging. It is commonly used in the Middle East (and seemingly Turkey also) in lieu of the IATA standard term “overpack”.
Bruce Coane since you curious about this 🙂
Thanks for sharing the update from Turkish, good to see some actual data.
Regards, Alastair Majury
I flew back to the US from Istanbul while the ban was in effect.
The way it worked was like this:
At the gate and after a few additional security checks, there was an additional line for people with larger than cellphone devices. Staff would take and log your laptop, then wrap it in bubble wrap and place it in a large, hard container with other passengers’ devices. I assume the containers were then placed in the hold. They gave me a free WiFi pass for the flight to compensate.
At your destination, another line was setup at baggage claim where you could reclaim your device. All in all, pretty painless.
As a frequent coach passenger. I have to say that my Turkish Airlines flights were the best I’ve flown in recent years. In flight entertainment was free and better than anything I’ve seen before. Food was also decent and alcohol also free.
Ban was only in effect on inbound US flights, not outbound.