By Lee Tulloch
The long goodbye ... laptops on planes. Credit: iStock
I found myself at Doha airport in April, for the first time. It's an impressive, gleaming place with comfortable lounges and many zones for work and play.
Even so, I hadn't paid much attention to my ticket and I was slightly annoyed to find I had three hours to kill before I connected to my Sydney flight.
No problem, though. This is the electronic age and I had my laptop, noise-cancelling headphones and smartphone with me. I plugged the headphones into the laptop, found a strong Wi-Fi signal, and logged onto Netflix. A few episodes of Grace and Frankie later, a snack and a drink or two, and I was called to the gate for boarding. It was an extremely pleasant interlude.
My laptop is my mobile office. It may only weigh 1.35 kilograms but it contains files and correspondence more than a decade old. When the smaller iPads were first introduced, I abandoned laptops for travel, but too often while on the road I was asked to dig out a document that wasn't accessible on the tablet. Besides, I like the familiarity of a laptop's programs and screen. Tablets can be inadequate when you've got a lot of editing to do.
So I bought a lighter laptop and shoved it in my handbag and it's as essential these days as my passport. I can work on the plane, in the departure lounge, in a hotel bed. Now that I've subscribed to several streaming services, I don't even have to worry if the plane's entertainment system has broken down or there's been a massive weather delay at the airport.
I imagine you know where I'm going with this.
The US Department of Homeland Security travel directive, which bans laptops and larger electronics from the cabins of aircraft flying to and from certain sensitive destinations, is threatening to spread to other governments and other destinations, including perhaps our own, and many travellers are in a tizz at the prospect.
It's easy to see why. Look around a cabin on any flight. There are children happily occupied watching animated movies or playing games on iPads. There are passengers engrossed in books on their Kindles or large screen phones. There are business people working on spreadsheets on their laptops and teenagers watching Thor on their notebooks. Sometimes it's hard to sleep at night for the glow from these now-essential devices.
Yet this scenario may change at the stroke of a government directive. If I were going from Doha to the US right now, my laptop would be on the tarmac in the plane's hold.
Yes, authorities are concerned that terrorist organisations are now capable of blowing up electronic devices in-flight, and argue this requires swift action, in the same way that potential shoe bombs and liquid bombs led to increased, delay-making security measures after 9/11.
But relegating our laptops and tablets to checked baggage? This is another matter altogether!
We have become so dependent on these devices that we've built our lives around them. They have revolutionised travel. There's no "office" to leave behind when we take holidays – it can come along too. This has allowed a great deal of freedom during times such as school vacations, where working parents can decamp with the family, knowing they can still answer emails or supervise projects while the children splash about in the resort pool.
Businesses can be run on the go. Long-haul flights are opportunities to write that proposal or catch up on email. Writers like me can sit at the airport and finish a travel story, work on a chapter of the novel. Plane food trays make adequate desks.
How are people going to spend all those travel hours without their electronic pals? We've become so accustomed to them it feels like a return to the dark ages. And what will travelling in the hold do to a precious device? What is the chance it will be stolen? What about the small but potentially catastrophic chance of a lithium ion battery catching fire in the hold? Is this a case of the prevention being worse than the disease?
Many are reassessing the need to travel or are avoiding certain airports. I wonder what effect this will have on targeted airports or destinations if it's long term.
One thing's for sure, authors of books with more than 500 pages will benefit. I'm packing Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (720 pages) for my next trip.
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