Ban is not applicable to any Indian airport or airliner.
The electronic ban on flights to the US from 10 airports in the Middle East has come as a boon for the Indian airliner Air India to sell more tickets.
The ticket sale of Air India’s direct flights to the US have soared 60 percent after the electronic ban was introduced. The ban prohibited passengers travelling to the US out of 10 airports in the Middle East and North Africa from taking their laptops and other electronic gadgets bigger than smartphone to the cabin.
Currently, the ban is not applicable to any Indian airport or airliner, all passengers flying with Air India are allowed to use their electronic gadgets inside the flight cabin.
The electronic ban exists on all US-bound direct flights from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait, Jeddah, Amman, Cairo, Istanbul or Casablanca.
Passengers flying from these airports are strictly asked to put their electronic gadgets larger than a smartphone in their checked luggage. Adding to this, on reaching their destination in the US, the passengers have to go through another long security check for their handbags. All this has now become a blessing in disguise for Air India.
Indians traveling to the US usually use the service of carriers like Emirates, Etihad (Jet Airways flights that transit from Abu Dhabi), Qatar Airways, Saudia, etc. Now, as they have to do a transit halt in the Middle East before flying to the US, the Indian passengers also comes under the purview of the electronic ban.
Middle Eastern carriers cannot run direct flights from India as the agreement between India and Middle Eastern carriers are such that they can fly direct flights only from their homeland.
All the Middle Eastern airlines flying to the US from India use either airports like Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, for transit and now all these airports come under the ambit of the electronic ban.
“A small percentage of passengers from Dubai, Kuwait, Muscat have booked tickets into India to transit from Delhi, Mumbai and then fly to the US from here. Last week, the passenger load on flights from the Gulf to India was about 83% which is a tad high for this time of the year. Because of the laptop ban, we expect the number to go up in the coming weeks,” said an Air India official, the Times of India reported. The officer affirmed that the ticket sales to the US have shot up 60 percent since the ban came into effect on March 25.
Now, the fares of Air India start at Rs. 86,000 ($1319) whereas the Middle Eastern carriers are offering tickets at much cheaper rates.