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Hot on the heels of Etihad having the electronics ban lifted on its flights from Abu Dhabi, Turkish Airlines flights from Istanbul have had their ban lifted as well as Emirates flights from Dubai. Turkish Airlines confirmed on Twitter that you can now take your electronics on board with you on flights to the US, while in the early hours of Wednesday, July 5, 2017, Emirates sources stated that they have also won a reprieve from the travel ban.
More Bans To Be Lifted?
It seems airlines have reacted very swiftly to the new security measures being implemented on flights to the U.S. The first airline to win a reprieve earlier in the week was Etihad, which had the ban lifted on its flights from Abu Dhabi. This made perfect sense with Abu Dhabi as a home to a U.S. CBP pre-clearance facility, however at the time it did not seem clear if other airports on the banned list would be able to have their ban lifted.
The current ban affected flights from 10 airports in 8 countries, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. With the latest reprieves, Turkey and the UAE are now completely off the banned list, and it could be only a matter of time before other countries are removed from the list once they comply with the new security measures.
Our Take
If these bans mean that security is being improved this is fantastic. What will be interesting over the next weeks and months is if airports in other affected countries will have their electronics bans lifted as well. Anyone who has traveled through Istanbul (IST) or Abu Dhabi (AUH) or Dubai (DXB), will know how stringent the security was at these airports. Ramping up existing procedures to meet the new measures should be relatively straightforward. Whether other countries will be able to increase their security measures sufficiently to convince US authorities is another matter entirely, especially Qatar which has a whole host of other problems at the minute.
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Istanbul security is pretty tight. I can only imagine what they have added
After reading several articles about the ban, it seems that is was a complete waste of time.
The ban never should have been implemented to begin with. Glad it’s getting lifted.
More good news! The bigger one for us was the lowering of restrictions for Abu Dhabi, but this doesn’t hurt, either.
Such a short ban, I truly wonder how much this was safety related. I can’t imagine that the “safety fear” suddenly decreased that much.
great news. I hope qatar do the same.
Seems pretty pointless to me now. Introduce a ban on something, your competition lift their ban and you follow suit?
As far as I remember it was a ban instated by the U.S. government so you can’t exactly follow suit when the competition is lifted. However I could see problems of unfair advantage when some are barred from laptops and some not so hopefully the U.S. will just lift it altogether.
very nice…I’m hoping Qatar will be next!
poorly thought out and implemented – travel is hard enough
Probably not a huge surprise, but good news. I’m happy to see it resolved. I’m curious as to what the new measures are, if anything that would actually help or if just lip service.
It’s amazing how quickly this electronic ban swung: it sounded a couple weeks ago like it would be implemented for just about all international flights, now it’s being rolled back — great news!
Well that was quick for them to lift the restrictions….what’s next
This will make it a bit more pleasant to travel and work
Glad to see the restrictions lifted. Travel is tough so any more restrictions just make it harder
Well that was a rather short-lived ban. I wonder how much it affected their business.