U.K. Airplane Electronics Ban Announced
This morning I covered the official news of an electronics ban on flights between specific countries and the United States. Now, according to Sky News the UK is implementing a ban of their own. It is similar in some ways, but different in others.
To start, the countries this ban applies to are different. This ban will apply to inbound flights to the UK from the following six countries:
- Turkey
- Lebanon
- Jordan
- Egypt
- Tunisia
- Saudi Arabia
A few of those countries are on the U.S. list and the ones that aren’t don’t have any direct flights to the United States. Perhaps the most interesting part is the countries/cities that are missing. Casablanca, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are all on the U.S. ban list, but are absent from the UK version.
Specific Sizes
While the U.S. directive mentions a cabin ban on a wide variety of electronics larger than a cell phone, the UK version actually lists specific sizes and only mentions laptops, tablets and phones larger than a certain size.
According to Sky News:
The devices covered by the ban are laptops, tablets and phones which are larger than a typical smartphone, measuring 16cm by 9.3cm by 1.5cm
For those who are metric illiterate, that is 6.3″ by 3.54″ by .59″. Devices over this size on flights to the U.K. from the included countries will be requited to be stored in the cargo hold.
Conclusion
This announcement brings up some new questions like why the cities that are hubs for the Middle East 3 are left off of the UK list and whether or not similar bans will spread to other countries in Europe and beyond. Only time will tell, but I have a feeling we might see more electronics bans announced soon.
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