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A CONTROVERSIAL BAN on carry-on laptops and tablets on flights from the Middle East to the United States and Britain went into effect today – with less fanfare and frustration than expected.
From Dubai to Doha, passengers on dozens of flights checked in their electronic devices, many shrugging off the measure as yet another inconvenience of global travel.
“It’s a rule. I follow the rules,” said Rakan Mohammed, a Qatari national who flies from Doha to the US two to three times a year.
“The bigger problem for my family is the no smoking. On a long flight, they become restless after three hours.”
At Dubai International, one of the world’s busiest hubs, flag carrier Emirates dispatched staff to guide passengers through one of the most intense travel weekends of the year.
Around 1.1 million people are expected to pass through as the city marks UAE spring break, Dubai Airports said.
An estimated 260,000 travellers were expected each day from Friday through Monday. Dubai International Airport expects 89 million passengers this year.
Staff in red suits could be seen at the airport today carrying signs explaining the electronics ban, ready to appease travellers with games and activities for children.
Government-owned Emirates, which operates 18 direct flights to the US daily, also began a service to enable passengers to use their electronic devices after check-in and until boarding.
Samuel Porter, who was travelling out of Dubai with his family, nonetheless decided to “avoid delays” at the airport by putting his laptop in the hold.
“The only issue is the kids. I have two kids and the iPad is always in their hands. Maybe they will watch a documentary and learn something useful this time”, he told AFP.
The United States this week announced a ban on all electronics larger than a standard smartphone on board direct flights out of eight countries across the Middle East.
US officials would not specify how long the ban will last, but Emirates told AFP that it had been instructed to enforce the measures until at least 14 October.
The ban covers electronics sold at Dubai Duty Free, Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths told local radio earlier this week.
Further disruption
Adding to the disruption today, a number of flights out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports were delayed due to thunderstorms, including an Emirates flight to Houston.
Travellers using 10 airports across the Middle East and North Africa are subject to the ban.
Britain has also announced a parallel electronics ban, effective today, targeting all flights out of Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Lebanon.
Royal Jordanian, which operates direct flights to London, New York, Detroit and Chicago, poked fun at the ban with a number of social media posts suggesting alternative in-flight activities, including doing “what we Jordanians do best… stare at each other!”
The bans have come under criticism for targeting majority-Muslim countries. The US ban in particular has raised eyebrows for covering airports from which US airlines do not operate direct flights.
But the United States and Britain have cited intelligence indicating passenger jets could be targeted with explosives planted in such devices.
Turkish airports began enforcing the ban today, with national carrier Turkish Airlines offering a similar laptop stowage service to Emirates.
Abu Dhabi, home to UAE national carrier Etihad Airways, is one of the few international airports with a US Customs and Border Protection Facility, which processes immigration and customs inspections before departure.
But those flying to the US from Abu Dhabi will still need to check in their electronics, Etihad said.
It’s clear we don’t need to target domestic energy use. It is data centres that need to be stopped.
@Furious George – The Wasp: make them pay peak daytime household rates. 24/24h.
@Furious George – The Wasp: They get preferential rates…… https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/02/13/some-multinationals-pay-less-for-electricity-than-irish-smes-and-homes/
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: outrageous
@Furious George – The Wasp:
Who here doesn’t use or need a data centre?
Social media, like photographs, video clips, Netflix, Spotify, WhatsApp, Tinder,your tap and go card, going to the doctor, hospitals, medical records, patient records, financial institutions, banks, restaurants for bookings, airlines for processing customer information, all use data centres.
Secondary storage is cheap, you can reduce your digital footprint by backing up your important files to memory stick or external hard drives instead of the cloud.
Not all data stored in a data centre is environmentally equal either.
Consider the difference between an online service which removes the need to use energy to travel to the service provider and the multiple storage of the same video content from a music concert.
@4g4mPnNi: there are 208 countries in the world. 16 of which are on the same latitude north of the equator. More north of us. I’m not bothered cou ting the countries with a similar latitude in the southern hemisphere. I guess my point is , why should they all locate here? Why do they take up so much of our usage while other countries have few or no data centres . They pay little tax compared to the normal worker . They get cheaper rates for electricity and cause a massive strain on our grid. Moderation should be the way foward .
@Furious George – The Wasp: comment written on a phone, while sitting watching Netflix just before you check your bank account balance all done before you go to bed so you can be up early for work where you have to send emails yadda Yadda yadda. Stop talking from yer whoop!!
@Thomas Meaney: Are you saying that the Internet would cease to exist if we didn’t have data centres in Ireland?
Government signed up to all of these unreachable climate targets. Now we’ll get fined billions for not hitting them. Money racket for someone, if ever there was one.
@Tony Murphy: How can we build hundreds of thousands of new houses (mainly for immigrants), fully dependent on electricity, and at the same time reduce our usage of electricity.
@Thomas Sheridan: We tie our own laces together, its sort of hilarious. ““The situation with transport will be very challenging as we will likely exceed the first transport sectoral ceiling by some considerable amount perhaps requiring a halving of annual transport emissions through the second period,”… like how? Stop people working?… Eamon Ryan literally asleep.
@Thesaltyurchin: on a positive climate related note, some large industrial users, like Intel, are on the verge of bankruptcy and closing down. Think of all the transport emissions savings as well when 6000 people stop travelling to work there.
@Thomas Sheridan: Horrid isn’t it… everywhere I’ve been governments a re mostly trying to move their people around to the benefit of their daily lives, weather its thousands of mopeds or state of art railways, but here it’s just all messed up, like the opposite or something.
@Thomas Sheridan: It has a 6% bankruptcy at the moment so it is unlikely!
@Thomas Sheridan: you don’t every house will have one hours esb and like it
We have no chance of meeting the government’s climate change targets when the government’s other policy is to grow the population at a large rate.
@Mark R: One of the biggest shames is the EU Marginal Pricing Policy which is directly responsible for the huge increases in electricity prices. Despite promising to remove gas from the policy, the EU has done nothing for the consumer who continues to pay extortionate rates for electricity.
Not one candidate brought this madness up in the recent EU election campaigns. Not one media asked any candidate a question about this policy.
It doesn’t matter how much renewable energy we produce, consumers are never going to see a cent in savings thanks to the disastrous Marginal Pricing Policy. That money will go to lining the pockets of vested interests.
Ireland needs to shift it’s energy policy to building nuclear and become self sufficient.
Record year for wind & solar energy output & Data Centres used up 80% of that increase, a red flag if ever there was one. Nobody shouting stop or calling for investigations into why the IDA, Councils & Eamon Ryan are ploughing the State headlong towards having most of Europes data stored here, putting our Grid infrastructure to the point of Blackouts & blowing our Emissions Targets out the window. Follow the Money !!! Households paying the highest rate for Energy in Europe & subsidizing behemoths like Goggle & Amazon, the whole scandal stinks. Ordinary families paying the price for our Govt being in the pocket of big business & 40 more Data Centres being built or in the Planning process, no real journalists left to expose it either.
@SV3tN8M4: If you’re looking for real journalists, you came to the wrong place.
@SV3tN8M4: They don’t care and The Green Party are Fine Gael on bikes. They screw over working families to ensure profiteers in big green industry can get away like bandits at our expense. The Greens just want to replace Big Oil with Big Wind. Same circus, different clowns.
Build the data centres in cooler climates with lots of renewable energy (hydro electric) like Sweden or Norway or Finland. We’re Full!
Electricity prices for household consumers
Highest electricity prices in Germany and Ireland.
@Dave Callaghan: imagine wanting something, that benefits the country’s economy, to halt growth. Are you on something??lol?? The issue is with the grid. We need to increase capacity. Simples!!!
@Darren Lynch: it doesn’t benefit our economy, that’s part of the problem. Better to build housing rather than data centres. They only benefit to the economy is the build phase.
I’ve worked in this space and very few jobs result from data centres. It’s best to build them in colder climates as suggested elsewhere in these comments.
Massive inroads have been made to make them more climate friendly but employment is very low in modern data centres. Invest in housing.
@Darren Lynch: you’re spot on
@Con Cussed: Few jobs but a lot of tax – easy to see why government likes them.
@Dave Callaghan: Lol! Sweeden and Finland are not nearly as desperate as we are.
There are 2 certainties in life : the Irish voting in a Fine Fail Fine Gael government and them making an absolute mess of the situation.
Wow another FFG success story.
Same as the ozone I suppose
If we’re fined by eu for being bold children the data centres should pay the fine and we’ll all wake up to electricity blackouts because of these same data centres other countries are not as soft as ireland but we give everything away cheaply
Electric car are also demanding if you consider they are also increasing. They want more taxes and try to justify it. Hybrid use petrol so will be taxed too. Corporations will not pay more for their data centre.
@Dominic Leleu: no compromise AND you have to pay extra, this is Irish politics. They’re giving away electric cars in the UK, but we cant touch them
@Thesaltyurchin: No they are not, they are selling cars interest free.
@Gary Kearney: true, *blushing skirt raised embarrassment!
So when will all this end. The way big business has a free ride on the backs of the bruses they create is staggering. Will a change in government end it,I doubt it. Wil mass demonstrations change it,I doubt it. The capitalists have taken over and you are just a tax number.
And what are the benefits of the data centres for us ?
Jobs ? Revenues ? Does that worth it ?
@Dominic Leleu: No benefit after initial build phase. Few jobs.
Good old French nuclear power to the rescue
Build nuclear power plants!
@Alan Kennedy: could you just imagine the fiasco of that,when you see the children’s hospital etc etc etc
@Alan Kennedy: Please don’t.
Why are targets always set up to fail?
@Telemachine: because we have a bunch of muppets running the country,when did any irish goverment ever hit a target? roads,schools,climate (that is the biggest scam in history) this list goes on and on its usually over budget and over time the only target thay can hit is tax take when they are shafting ordinary people.
They should only be allowed operator with their own generators.
@Dee: Great idea. That would be amazing for the environment!!!!lol!!!!
@Darren Lynch: Any new industry requiring massive energy usages should be required, as part of their planning requirements, to build renewable energy infrastructure to counteract their demand on the Grid. It shouldn’t be solely the responsibility of the grid.
@Susan: + Free access to Netflix and YouTube premium for all.
What about an A.I. government that operates purely on logic?
@Keth Tgi: AIs don’t operate on logic. Like many humans they tend to make things up.
One thing everyone needs to know – if we don’t build them here they’ll be built elsewhere and so there’s still an impact on the environment. If we don’t build them we lose out on investment and jobs..
@John Lee: There are few jobs. The return on investment is not there.
Now to force smart meter home users to reduce by screwing them in peak hours so the new joe soap will have dinner at 1 am. Do the washing at 4am ect car use will also be hammered mileage tax to reduce their emissions farmers will only grow trees but will they protect our fish stocks
May introduce a new green tax to at least offset this,problem solved
This is my concern, we are granting planning at a rapid pace for solar farms on the best of land. We are told its the best way forward. ARE WE SURE? solar farms are simply feeding the data centres. Not to mention the water consumption!. Can we not be more creative around location of solar farms and developing stronger policy around data centres.
We have the wind and waves and yet we do not push those recourses.
Green energy and as much as we want, who complain, the greens.
We have wide open bogs which could have wind generators, who complains the greens!
Wave generators, it could upset the fish or the birds.
It goes on and on!
@Gary Kearney: wind energy is the most expensive as we are going to find out when 40 euro per household goes on your bill to fund them
Let be honest governments and 1 percenters of Ireland and world dont give beep. Its less well off who try harder and are asked to suffer more so they can have little more. Be better world without internet i feel. But let s continue to do things without thinking how this going work. Thats what Irish government being doing for years. Thats why country is unstable as cost living out of control. But there good . Dont forget vote them back in next year.
have your say