1) If they're concerned about lithium ion battery fires, having 25-100 in the cargo hold, stuffed amongst cotton and polyester fabric, where there's no crew access and no fire suppression, is more likely to cause a problem than having them in carry-on.
2) If they're hearing chatter that someone is going to turn them into bombs, this is still stupid since they're still allowing phones. Which link up to laptops, and can be used to trigger or start said fire, in an area with no fire protection. The cargo section isn't inside a Faraday cage.
3) Plane cargo holds are not fire or bomb-proof; they're right under the passenger seating area. And closer to the fuel tanks.
4) Cargo areas are pressurized, just like the rest of the plane. They can't be selectively de-pressurized, so it's not like a fire in the hold is more manageable than one in cabin. It's less manageable.
5) So... this isn't a safety issue. What is it? It's not like the airlines are going to make up the lost travel revenue ($800-1200 per business class seat) on $8 in flight entertainment and $75 baggage fees. This is a boon for video-conferencing (yay, actually, we're long past the need for face-time for every single thing) and remote office work, but the airlines don't have any good incentives for going along with this.
6) DHS/Customs have been making noise about and actually copying the contents of devices entering the country. Is this their way of doing so for all air travel? Assigning some low-level schmuck to ride cargo and copy every device in transit? Which is still stupid, because the signal to noise ratio (or cat and dick pics to data ratio) is going to be astronomical.
7) I'm seeing a market for rental Chromebooks/cloud-computers/stick interfaces at airports. Rent a cloud device or stick interface at your destination, everything lives on the Cloud or on a stick computer. For real security, leave the long, complex password in the office, don't memorize it, and call back once one has cleared Customs to retrieve it. Or travel with a $200 Chromebook with no stored data.
8) This is going to screw hardest with professional photographers and musicians, and anyone whose primary workspace is online.
9) Cunard still runs transatlantic routes. It takes 5-6 days, instead of 11-14 hours. Just sayin'.
10) This is fishy as all hell. It doesn't make sense at all, unless the point is to prevent travel into the US and discourage USians from leaving. Which I'm not entirely discounting.
= new reply since forum marked as read
