Travelling With Your Laptop - At the Airport

Dmitri April 25th, 2007

This is the continuation of my earlier article ‘Travelling With Your Laptop - Before You Leave‘. I have stuck to airplanes, since the trains or buses differ from country to country. Moreover, the issues that arise from taking a laptop in flight do not occur in case of surface transports.

Leaving On A Jetplane With A Laptop
This days it is normal to carry a laptop on any airline just like a bottle of water. If you are not sure, call the ariline and make sure your country aviation regulations allow it or you might have problems at the airport. As a handy reference most countries from Japan to USA allow laptops on board except a few laptop phobic ones in between.

Your Laptop is Not a Cargo
Do not put your laptop as check in luggage. You don’t want it to face the extreme environment and high degree in-laptopic torture faced by the luggage both in and outside the plane’s cargo hold. It could also get stolen, in fact in the unattended luggage hold area in airports laptop thefts are not uncommon. Try to keep it with you as a hand baggage even if it means you have to check in the laptop bag and carry the laptop in your hands.

Security Screening Your Laptop
Do not put the laptop on the screening machine with the case. Take it out of the bag and place it gently on the conveyor belt. Do not put anything on the laptop, not even a couple of coins or your car keys. Pick up your laptop after the screening is over and be careful about this. If you get a little lax, your laptop could get nicked or stolen. You might be asked to turn on your laptop so keep the batteries charged and handy.

As a precaution to prevent a situation where your laptop gets security screened while you are waiting in the queue for security check, put your laptop on the conveyor belt only when you are ready to pass through the metal detector. Generally you will know that if it is a queue passing through and it is your turn. This will ensure you can pick up your laptop as soon as you get screened and there wouldn’t be much idle time for a thief to make a quick nick.

Safety of Your Laptop from Nickers
Never leave your laptop bag unattended anywhere in the airport and if possible use a bag which does not cry out “It is a laptop in there!”. Most of the laptop thefts happen on laptop cases with company logos which is why I recommend a generic case rather than company one. Personally company cases are a strict no no but if you don’t have alternative try to cover up the logo if you think you might lose sight of your laptop.