WASHINGTON (TVR) – The secretary of Homeland Security is considering not just expanding the ban on large electronics—which includes laptops—to cover non-stop flights from Europe, but on all flights worldwide to and from the United States, a sweeping directive that would cause widespread disruption for hundreds of millions of passengers each year.
Speaking on FOX News Sunday, Secretary John Kelly said he “might” announce such a broad order.
While he gave no timeline on such a decision, tighter restrictions on large electronics in the aircraft cabin seem likely.
“We are going to raise the bar for generally speaking aviation security much higher than it is now,” Kelly told host Chris Wallace.
“There’s new technologies down the road, not too far down the road that we will rely on. But it is a real sophisticated threat and I will reserve that decision until we see where it’s going.”
“We are now looking at kind of a worldwide hard look at raising the bar, the minimum bar, on aviation security,” Kelly continued. “So, still contemplating extending the ban, as we work with partners.”
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European Partners
Those partners include governments and security officials in Europe, who were initially frustrated at a lack of consultation when it appeared several weeks ago that the Trump administration was about to take unilateral action on requiring large electronics to be placed in the cargo hold.
Since then, representatives from the U.S. and the European Commission have met in Brussels and, last week, in Washington, D.C.
Europe is the largest international gateway for travel to and from the U.S., with 58.9 passengers for a 12-month period ending in March, according to U.S. Department of Transportation statistics.
During that same time, airlines had 259.9 million “available seats” on flights into and out of the United States, up 7% from the same time period a year prior, the data showed.
Cost of Large Electronics Ban
The International Air Transport Association has warned that if the restrictions were extended to cover the approximately 400 daily flights between Europe and the United States, it would cost passengers an estimated $1.1 billion each year in lost productivity and extra staffing costs.
Four out of five travel managers representing corporations, universities, and governments say they would reduce trips to the United States, Europe, and transit through European hubs if the Trump administration were to expand its electronics ban, according to a survey by the Business Travel Coalition.
In a sign of just how disruptive such a ban may be, 60% of the travel managers said their organization’s travel policies currently prohibited their employees from putting a laptop in their checked baggage.
“These survey results should illuminate the economic risk of such a ban on electronics that are larger than a cell phone and encourage the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collaborate with travel industry stakeholders to identify, test, and deploy risk mitigation solutions short of a ban on laptops and tablets,” BTC founder Kevin Mitchell, said in the release.
The BTC, and other groups, have suggested that rather than a blanket ban on large electronics, authorities should utilize more explosive detection swabs, additional bomb-sniffing dogs, or allow for laptops to be carried into the cabin by those who have been accepted into trusted-traveler programs such as Global Entry, TSA Pre-Check, or NEXUS.
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