On the blog, I haven’t talked much about the recent Electronic Travel Ban, purely because there is just so much information on the topic online already. It’s now been 10 days since it got implemented and it’s still causing major confusion and passengers are NOT happy with the new rules. In my opinion, I think the ban is utterly ridiculous and quite stupid. I did tweet about it and many agreed:
The new ban means putting all lithium-ion batteries in checked bags increasing the chances of fires and explosions. 0 logic. #ElectronicsBan
— Zac George (@pointsfromthpac) March 21, 2017
Anyway back to the original post….
From next week, Passengers travelling to Australia from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha airports will be subject to additional screening.
This means all passengers travelling on Etihad, Emirates and Qatar will all have to get screening. The ABC is reporting that there is currently no threat to Australia but the Australian government has decided to do this because it’s in line with the U.S and UK government. Interestingly, Qantas has been excluded from the list.
It’s currently unknown what the extra screening will entail but it will focus on electronic devices. At this time it doesn’t sound like electronic devices will be banned from flights coming into Australia which is a massive relief.
Doha Hamad International
To me, It sounds like the extra screening will just be a more thorough version of what’s already being done. Let’s just hope that Australia doesn’t play follow the leader and starts banning devices, that would be very annoying and would affect me greatly as almost 60% of my travel to and through the Middle East.
I certainly didn’t expect Australia to follow in the footsteps of the U.S and UK but they are doing it for our safety which is reassuring.
