"..business travelers assume they'll have access to their laptops on flights. A tech-free, or even a tech-lite flight isn't much of a flight at all in 2017. So by targeting our gadgets, the government can take an entire airline down."
"These three airlines, as well as the other airlines targeted in the order, are likely to lose a major amount of business from their most lucrative customers — people who travel in business class and first class. Business travelers are disproportionately likely to want to work on the plane — the reason they are prepared to pay business-class or first-class fares is because it allows them to work in comfort. These travelers are unlikely to appreciate having to do all their work on smartphones, or not being able to work at all. The likely result is that many of them will stop flying on Gulf airlines, and start traveling on U.S. airlines instead.
As the Financial Times notes, the order doesn’t affect only the airlines’ direct flights to and from the United States — it attacks the “hub” airports that are at the core of their business models. These airlines not only fly passengers directly from the Gulf region to the United States — they also fly passengers from many other destinations, transferring them from one plane to another in the hubs. This “hub and spoke” approach is a standard economic model for long-haul airlines, offering them large savings. However, it also creates big vulnerabilities. If competitors or unfriendly states can undermine or degrade the hub, they can inflict heavy economic damage."
Because the useful volume of a laptop is somewhat limited and in the cabin you can ensure placement against the skin of the aircraft. In the baggage hold it will have been scanned better and by a process that is less susceptible to compromise by a single person, it will have been placed in a somewhat random position inside another container with a fragmentation blanket around it, etc. Yes, you can certainly bring down an aircraft by putting a bomb in luggage, but a lot of effort has been put in place to prevent this exact thing.
In some airports, your technology will even be removed from your luggage by a helpful and diligent TSA or airline employee, and they will take it back to their own home for a very thorough functional check that may take years to complete.
CNN, Chicago Tribune, and ABC News ran a few stories about this "extra-special luggage screening" around 3-5 years ago, which I won't link because of autoplaying videos and/or slideshows.
In most modern western airports checked bags are scanned using a CT scanner rather than a 3 image x-ray that you see used for carry-on bags. This gives a much better image with more spatial clues regarding the contents and makes the resulting image much easier for automated detection assistance. Checked bags are also often passed by canine units for explosive detection.
I've read that too. The scanners for luggage are much better than those for the security lines. They might even use machine learning to detect things. I don't remember the source. sorry
"..business travelers assume they'll have access to their laptops on flights. A tech-free, or even a tech-lite flight isn't much of a flight at all in 2017. So by targeting our gadgets, the government can take an entire airline down."
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/2...
"These three airlines, as well as the other airlines targeted in the order, are likely to lose a major amount of business from their most lucrative customers — people who travel in business class and first class. Business travelers are disproportionately likely to want to work on the plane — the reason they are prepared to pay business-class or first-class fares is because it allows them to work in comfort. These travelers are unlikely to appreciate having to do all their work on smartphones, or not being able to work at all. The likely result is that many of them will stop flying on Gulf airlines, and start traveling on U.S. airlines instead.
As the Financial Times notes, the order doesn’t affect only the airlines’ direct flights to and from the United States — it attacks the “hub” airports that are at the core of their business models. These airlines not only fly passengers directly from the Gulf region to the United States — they also fly passengers from many other destinations, transferring them from one plane to another in the hubs. This “hub and spoke” approach is a standard economic model for long-haul airlines, offering them large savings. However, it also creates big vulnerabilities. If competitors or unfriendly states can undermine or degrade the hub, they can inflict heavy economic damage."