Just about 15 months ago, on February 2, 2016, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb onboard an Airbus A321 airliner of Daallo Airlines some 15 to 20 minutes after it took off from Mogadishu Airport, in Somalia.

The bomb blew a roughly 1m2 hole in the aircraft’s fuselage. Fortunately, it had been detonated too early into the flight; reportedly, a fuel tank located near where the bomber sat was still full of fuel and so the bomb did not trigger a larger explosion (it is fuel fumes that explode, not the fuel itself; naturally, you do not get much in the way of fumes in a full or nearly full tank). The only fatality was the bomber himself, although two other passengers were wounded. The key point in all this is that the bomb was concealed in a laptop.

Fast forward to last week. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that passengers flying from certain Middle Eastern and North African countries to the US would not be allowed to take their laptops, tablets, cameras, portable DVD players, travel printers/ scanners and electronic games devices (if bigger than a cellphone) into airliner cabins but would have to put them in their check-in luggage. Cellphones could still be carried into the cabins. The ban specified particular airports in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The DHS stated: “Evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation and are aggressively pursuing innovative methods to undertake their attacks, to include smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items.” The DHS cited the “2015 airliner downing in Egypt, the 2016 attempted airliner downing in Somalia, and the 2016 armed attacks against airports in Brussels and Istanbul” as reasons for the decision.

The citation of the airport attacks seems odd, and hardly relevant. Equally odd was the reaction of some overseas media organisations, who approached information technology (IT) experts for their opinions. IT experts, note. Not experts on bombs or terrorism or aviation. Speaking way outside their areas of expertise, their opinions – dismissive of the utility of the ban – were of no more weight than those of any other members of the general public. Unsurprisingly, they seemed to have no knowledge of the laptop bomb attack on Daallo Airlines. Nor did the media organisations which interviewed them seem to be aware of it, suggesting a lack of research. (Regrettably, at least some South African media also seemed to have forgotten the attack, despite it being on an African airline and in an African country.) However, other media organisations were aware of, and referred to, the Daallo attack.

And then, some 24 hours later, news surfaced in London that Britain was going to introduce the same ban, again regarding flights from certain Middle Eastern and North African countries. And 24 hours after that, the British government confirmed it. However, the British list is not the same as the American one, being composed of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey. The British ban was more clearly defined than the US one, covering all electronic devices that are more than 16 cm long, 9.3 cm wide and 1.5 cm deep. British media also reported that the ban had been under consideration for weeks.

“Safety of the travelling public is our highest priority,” stated the official spokesperson for UK Prime Minister (PM) Theresa May. “That is why we keep aviation security under constant review and put in place measures that are necessary, effective and proportionate. Over the last few weeks, the PM has chaired a number of meetings on aviation security, most recently this morning (March 22), where it was agreed new measures will be introduced.” British Secretary of State for Transport (Minister, in South African terminology) Chris Grayling commented that “[w]e understand the frustration that these measures may cause and we are working with the aviation industry to minimise any impact. Our top priority will always be to maintain the safety of British nationals. These new measures apply to flights into the UK and we are not currently advising against flying to and from these countries.”

Only small bombs can be hidden in laptops and similarly-sized electronic devices. Placed in an airliner’s cargo hold, expert (that is, aviation security expert) opinion is that, even if they can be detonated remotely, their blast will, in the vast majority of cases, be absorbed by the rest of the cargo and do no damage to the aircraft. In a cabin, even if they do not inflict fatal damage on the airliner, they could still kill and wound passengers. So the cabin but not checked-luggage ban makes sense.

Starting off with country-specific bans also makes sense. Sadly, all the countries on both lists currently have significant internal security issues, complicating the maintenance of airport security. It is generally believed that Russian airline Metrojet Airbus A321 destroyed (with the loss of 224 lives) on October 31, 2015, was brought down by a bomb planted in the cargo hold by a baggage handler at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport. There are other countries with similar problems, but perhaps their security is rated as being better or intelligence suggests that the risks there are currently very low.

South African travellers should take notice: people flying to the UK by way of any of the countries on the British list will have to put the restricted electronic devices into their check-in luggage from the start of their flight, here in South Africa. Presumably, the same would apply to travellers heading to the US by way of one of the countries on the American list. Given that terrorists are highly mobile, and have small groups of sympathisers almost everywhere, I sadly suspect that this ban will be rolled out all around the world in the coming months.