Let the Traveller Beware - Laptops vs IATA Screening Regulations

David Heath
Monday, 10 March 2008 18:09

Your IT - Home IT

Let it not be said that there is consistency in the way airport-based screening is conducted.  When you take a PC to the airport, the Americans have a saying, “your mileage may vary!"

In a recent blog, programmer and Author Michael Nygard relates the sad but true but amusing tale (called “Steve Jobs made me miss my flight”)of how his brand-new MacBook Air cased him to be of sufficient interest to the security checking people that he missed his flight. 

To cut his long story short (read the whole tale on the link above), when his new machine went through the airport X-ray scanner at his departure airport, the staff had no idea what they were dealing with – how dare anyone have a laptop with no fixed disk, no ports.  Clearly this is not the expected cookie-cutter laptop; Nygard is in trouble!

Eventually, but not until after his flight has closed, Nygard convinces the rent-an-expert security scanners that a MacBook Air really *is* a laptop.  And a damned good one at that!

Forward to some examples closer to home.  Discussing such issues, one of my journalist associates recently acquired the new Asus Eee PC and I dared her to not take it from her briefcase at the X-ray scanner next time she flew.  She reported back to me a couple of days later, no problems at all – in her words, “Victory!”

Later in the same discussion, another colleague bemoaned the fact that he never seemed able to even get his external USB drive though without removing it from his laptop bag; generally after it had been in the bag for the first scan!

In my own case, my laptop always comes out of my bag, but my external drive never does.  Oh, and ONLY at Melbourne’s Virgin terminal do I take my collapsible umbrella out of my bag – they’re worse than New Delhi (and that’s a tough airport to get through!). 

Please read onto page 2.