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Laptops on planes: Economic nationalism, terrorism and combustion, oh my!
In early March, the US banned large electronic devices in cabins of flights to the US from 8 Middle East and North African countries: Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE. The move by the US had the air of a sore loser scratching out what little victory it could – the Trump administration did not get its travel ban, so it took the concession prize of banning laptops.
This was done in the name of security but certainly not for the sake of safety. The laptop ban came a little more than one year after ICAO prohibited Lithium-ion battery shipments on passenger aircraft on the grounds of safety. Any fire could more easily be contained in the cabin than in the hold. That ban was extended by CAAs to a ban on any Lithium-ion batteries being checked-in by passengers with their luggage.
As with the travel ban, speculation swirled that the real motivation was President Trump’s ‘economic nationalism’ (or protectionism, as it is known to the rest of the world). Just one month prior to the initiation of the laptop ban, US air carriers had urged Trump to take on the Middle East carriers.
The affair smacked of economic nationalism, that is, until the UK followed suit, and upped the ante by adding Lebanon and Tunisia to the list. Like justifications for invading Iraq, UK intelligence is held, at least in the US, to be unimpeachable on this issue. Certainly not out of coincidence, the UK CAA recently removed from its website an advisory to cameramen not to pack spare Lithium-ion batteries in hold luggage.
So much for the economic nationalism theory. Nevertheless, economic consequences followed. The ban on laptops dealt a blow to Middle East hubs by enticing passengers to book flights to the US that transit through non-Middle East hubs. In response, Emirates has cut back on flights to the US.
The threat may be quite real. In May, Trump revealed highly classified intelligence details to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Purportedly, that intelligence indicated that Yemini and other Isis operatives had figured out how to install bombs in laptops. The latest theory is that special containers in the hull can block frequency from cell phone triggers to bombs in laptops.
The intelligence revealed by Trump was so important that he shared it with Russia, although not with Nato partners in Europe. The incident prompted Angela Merkel’s claim that the US is no longer on Europe’s side.
Indeed, rumours started to swirl that Europe too was to be on the chopping block of being the subject of a ban – which from a pure security-first perspective is the only logical outcome. Europe was forced to seek assurances, as well as undertakings of intelligence cooperation, from the Trump administration on the laptop ban. Rather than assuring Europe that it will not extend the laptop ban to European flights, the Trump administration announced in early May that it was considering extending the laptop ban to all flights to the US from anywhere in the world.
Let’s take the Trump administration’s claims at face value, for a moment. The threat of terrorism creates an immediate, overwhelming necessity for action that is so urgent that it requires the swiftness of an executive order banning immigration, er, banning laptops on flights from certain countries. The US, however, does not ban the use of laptops on flights leaving the US. The presumption is that security services at airports outside of the US are incapable of detecting laptop bombs.
What then of Shannon Airport? For flights bound for the US from SNN, passengers are screened for bombs by US customs and boarder patrol prior to boarding the aircraft. Will flights from SNN be subject to the laptop ban as well? It is Europe, after all. The same happens to be true for Abu Dhabi. Is the security theory falling apart yet?
Nor does the ban apply to flights from other parts of the world. Terrorists, apparently, are not capable of enduring the rigours of long-haul flying to get the US from the Middle East via a separate leg from Tokyo, or Sydney, for example. It is very dehydrating, granted, but for a suicide bomber that does seem like a minor inconvenience.
Europe’s concern was Lithium-ion battery fires on planes. After weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration decided in late May that it would not extend the laptop ban to European countries. ‘For the time being’, they ominously added. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly iterated that a laptop ban was still on the table.
How severe is the terrorist threat if the US is relenting to concerns about fires on board aircraft? Was this decision the result of a risk/benefit analysis – the frequency of bombing attempts is lower than the incidence of Lithium-ion battery fires on planes and the lesser of two evils picked? That, we will likely never know, but both sides agreed to cooperate further on technical issues to ensure security and safety.
Let us hope that economic nationalism is not the basis for these decisions. An industry conducting international air transport cannot succumb to it.
