What's the threat vector that they are trying to mitigate against? The attack already happened and the vector that the attack used seems to be applicable to any device with a battery.
Are they worried about pagers that are affected but didn't go off in the original operation?
You must be new to airport security theater
We all had to start taking off our shoes after the Richard Reid shoe bomber. Twenty plus years later we are still reacting to a terrifying attack with an ordinary object that didn’t even work.
And we are still bottlenecking hundreds of people in a crowd BEFORE the checkpoint and it won’t be until someone attacks there will we ever actually do anything about it
It has never been about preventing anything. It was about the appearance of doing something.
The US particularly is extreme in this regard. The TSA has become such a large employer that it's now unthinkable to scale it back.
9.11 was of course tragic, but that problem was solved by locking the cockpit door. And yes, no-one wants to be on a plane with an explosive device, but those are really rare. Not least because that same device is easier to use, with more effective results, in pretty much anywhere else.
And after all that money spent, it's unclear that the TSA would actually prevent any serious attack.
Outside the US things tend to be a lot more relaxed. (So much so that special checkpoints are arranged for flights to and from the US to conform to US requirements.)
Agree. It is simply idiotic how they conveniently gather hundreds of people in a crowded spot who are all pulling and tinkering with stuff from their backpacks. A bad actor can easily cause more deaths there than on a plane nowadays.
Everytime I go through that charade, I roll my eye at everything they do since it is so obviously useless and unnecessary. The worst thing is, apparently, some people really believe in it.
Other electronic devices (laptops, tablets, etc) are far less likely to contain anything like this, because Apple, Huawei, Dell etc manage their supply chains and don't just let anyone make products carrying their brand.
There are so many manufacturers of walkie-talkies and pagers, it's essentially a wild west. No one knows how many PETN-laced pagers were manufactured. The ones that exploded were the ones that happened to have certain phone numbers and were in range at the time.
It's unclear how many of those might have PETN, which is essentially undetectable. It doesn't give off any vapors, so sniffer dogs cannot detect it. 6 grams of it can blow the fuselage of the plane. It doesn't show up on X-Rays.
Curious if the explosives in the pagers would have been detected at airports. Also, imagine if one went off in a plane.
The explosive used was PETN which is very difficult to make and very difficult to detect. You pretty much need a spectroscope.
Generally airports and ports are set up for detecting things like explosives you cooked up yourself or stolen mining equipment or whatever. Military grade explosives are expected to be chemically tagged because they’re for, y’know, legit military use and not terrorism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Marking_of...
I can’t find anything on whether or not the PETN that Israel used was tagged. If not, it would be yet another layer of irresponsibility. Unexploded ordinance is very real, as the recent news about the WWII era bomb blowing a hole in that airport runway in Japan attests to.
I would have not much faith in that. They only randomly do the swab tests for explosive traces from what I've seen.
Presumably the explosives were well hidden and might not even trigger these scanners.
TSA is famous for not identifying the majority of weapons: https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-...
> Hezbollah examined the pagers after they were delivered to Lebanon, starting in 2022, including by travelling through airports with them to ensure they would not trigger alarms, two additional sources told Reuters.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-handed-o...
Gotta imagine if they wanted to detonate during a flight time they could have.
Catastrophic! But with impunity as usual.
My favorite other emirates banned item is “attaché cases”. Never could figure out why. Please satisfy my curiosity.
They watched too many spy/thriller movies?
The headline is sensationalist; Emirates is banning pagers and walkie talkies for all flights into and out of Dubai:
>“All Passengers travelling on flights to, from or via Dubai are prohibited from transporting pagers and walkie talkies in checked or cabin baggage,” the airline wrote in a statement posted on its website Friday.
If Dubai isn't on your itinerary this doesn't affect you, at least for now.
Emirates only flies through Dubai. They don't have any flights that don't go to or depart from Dubai.
This isn't true. I've flown MEL->SIN. They also fly SYD->SIN
Yes, they have a few routes like that where it makes sense to have dogleg at the end of a distant destination instead of two direct flights. I took Emirates from Rio to Buenos Aires, which is a route that presumably exists so they don't have to fly to both cities directly from Dubai. Still, the vast majority of their flights are hubbed in Dubai.
Yes they do. New Jersey to Athens is a popular one. These are called freedom flights.
Specifically "Fifth Freedom" flights, but they are a minority of Emirates flights, often with a subset of the people that flew the Dubai connecting section.
Isn't Dubai a major international stop over for long haul flights?
Yes. The middle east is geographically well located for intercontinental traffic. So Emirates (and Qatar) serve has big hubs for long-distance travel.
Dubai Airport is large, and runs 24x7. I've had a couple long layovers there (in the airside hotel) and its amazing to see the never-ending, round the clock, activity in the terminal.
Indeed the shops etc in the terminal cannot be closed - there are literally no doors on them.
Equally reporting flight boards are amazing. There are flights from everywhere to everywhere.