This is a major pain if you're flying with small children. On long flights, tablets are an absolute godsend...
U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
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Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#32So what happens if the terrorist first flies to canada... Then the US? Or what if they are already in the US? Is there something so special about the bomb that it can't be made anywhere? I'm just wondering how this does anything but ensure that battery fires will never be put out.
The logical conclusion of all this is that in the foreseeable future laptops will be banned from the cabins of all flights, regardless of origin or destination. :/
(Of course, the decision to ban laptops on flights from Europe has not yet been finalised, so this is all still speculation at this point.)
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#33So they can backdoor them without you even noticing. Wonderful
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The risk with laptops in the cargo hold isn't the blast force of explosions causing a hull breach, but fires. Now any terrorist who wants to bring down a plane simply needs to rig their laptop batteries to catch on fire, which is much, much easier to do than rigging it to explode.
Doesn't planes have automated extinguishers in the cargo hull? I actually don't know, but it is something I would assume.
Batteries contain their own oxidiser and fuel, so the only way of extinguishing a better fire is to remove the heat (fire triangle: fuel, oxidiser, heat).
The best lay-person's method for extinguishing battery fires is flooding with cold water, which will be hard on an airplane at the best of times.
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#35Good job, xkcd: https://xkcd.com/651/
As a bonus, here's what the TSA thought about laptops in 2009: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=46966
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#36That's a bit of a pain. I wonder why a laptop bomb would cause problems in the cabin but not in the cargo hold.
This was answered and discussed at length in the article
>The battery bombs would need to be manually triggered, a source explained, which is why the electronics ban is only for the aircraft cabin not checked luggage.
Obviously stuff in the cabin are much easier to access and manually manipulate than stuff in the cargo hold. Im also very disappointed at the slew of other answers and their up-voters who clearly did not read the article.
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not knowledgable about this subject but do you have any sources for that? After some quick Googling the best numbers I could find state that air travel is responsible for somewhere between 2%-4% of all human induced CO2 emissions and somewhere around 12%-15% of the emissions from transport sources.
Those percentages have outsized impact because you are emitting them very high. So while they contribute to 4% of emissions, they may as well contribute to 8% of global warming. We don't reduce emissions just because. We want to stop the climate change. We should just optimize the planes. I do hope that in 10 years batteries will be good enough for electric fan engines.
The problem with electric aircraft is a bit like a mini Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. In a conventional aircraft fuel is burnt off as it flies causing it to lighten and become more fuel efficient as it travels. With battery aircraft this doesn’t happen so you need more batteries upfront to travel the distance.
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#38So all the terrorists have to do is convince the USA they've figured out how to hide bombs in humans and they'll ban humans from flights.
I know you're joking but it seems like it is possible that Richard Reid the shoe bomber could have inserted the explosives inside a plastic bag and then put that inside himself (either swallow it or in the rectum) and then remove the explosive in the airplane bathroom and ignited it. Not sure why they have not done this already.
In Gibson's Count Zero, Turner was almost killed by a "Slamhound", an exploding dog trained to find him. I vaguely recall that the dog's liver was replaced by explosive.
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
A laptop bomb would presumably be fairly small in size and would probably have to be placed directly against some sensitive part of the plane in order to be effective. The cargo hold meanwhile is already reinforced and any bomb would most likely end up in a middle of a lot of baggage that would absorb most of the blast. It would probably force the plane to make an emergency landing but it's unlikely to be catastrophi…
The risk with laptops in the cargo hold isn't the blast force of explosions causing a hull breach, but fires. Now any terrorist who wants to bring down a plane simply needs to rig their laptop batteries to catch on fire, which is much, much easier to do than rigging it to explode.
Looking at a youtube video of a laptop battery fire https://youtu.be/pizFsY0yjss?t=3m15s
I find it hard to see that taking out the metal box http://www.eyeno.net/2007/07/15/american-airlines-paul-bunya...
and then the plane.
Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe
#40[deleted]