According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Government has rolled back the electronics ban on Emirates & Turkish Airlines. This is right on the heels of the announcement that Etihad was also cleared by U.S. authorities. This is great news for those of you flying out of Dubai or Istanbul in the near future.
So far 3 of the 10 airports under the ban have been cleared by the U.S. Government. Qatar Airways is the last major carrier of the banned airports, and I would expect the airport in Doha, Qatar to be cleared in the near future. Qatar Airways has seen a large hit to their business with the ban which has been compounded by having diplomatic ties cut by six of its neighbors. One positive recent development for Qatar was being named “2017 Airline of the Year” by SkyTrax.
Bottom Line
I'm actually surprised at how quickly many of these bans are being rolled back by U.S. authorities. It would have been more reasonable to ask these foreign airlines to implement the new enhanced security measures back in March, rather than ban electronics altogether, and detrimentally impact their business. It seems the ban was implemented without much of a plan and it has taken three months for U.S. authorities to figure out what it wanted from the 10 banned airports. It's hard not to suspect there are political motivations involved as well. Regardless, I'm glad to see things are slowly returning to normal.