If they ban iPods and laptops on flights, I’ll stop flying

Here’s a phrase I never thought I’d have occasion to say: Thank God I don’t live in the United Kingdom. No offense of course to anyone who does, but man, I thought my government had lost its mind when it comes to flying…and now I see that your government has gone off the deep end. Today the United Kingdom has announced that it has banned all iPods and laptops as carry-on items on flights. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for this business traveler, that wouldn’t just make flying incredibly dull — it would make it impossible.

Let’s set the iPod thing aside for a moment and break down the laptop ban. I know this is an iPod site, but everyone knows that laptops are for work and iPods are for play, right? Not being able to take my laptop on a flight as a carry-on would require me to pack it into my checked luggage, which I can only describe in two words: not happening. If they think I’m going to take my laptop, with all its precious data on it, and stick it into a suitcase that they’re going to toss around like a loaf of bread while loading it onto the plane, then they’re just plain cuckoo. For that matter, there’s zero chance I would ever put my main laptop into a bag that’s going to leave my side at any point during the trip. If my laptop is going to be lost during a trip, it’s going to be because I lost it, not because some baggage handler stuck it on the wrong plane and sent it to Sydney by accident.

So all that would be left would be for me to simply not travel with a laptop. And if I’m going to Lollapalooza in Chicago for the weekend, then that’s fine. But Macworld Expo? MacGathering? Podcast Expo? Without my laptop? Yeah, right.

There would be one out, I guess, which would be to dump all of my vital data onto the iPod I carry on my person, so that if the laptop is lost or damaged, I can pick up a new laptop when I get there, and then dump my vital data onto it from my laptop. Except oops, the UK has also banned anyone from taking iPods on the flight. Not only is the iPod ban an incredible bummer when it comes to killing six hours, it also eliminates the one way in which I would feel even moderately safe in placing my laptop in my checked luggage.

So I’d be down to one rather simple, straightforward option: don’t fly. Seeing as how I live in Florida and the iPod industry now drags me out to California as many as half a dozen times a year, that could be something of a daunting task. Would I rather spend forty hours in my car with my iPod, or six hours on a plane without it? Not sure, to tell you the truth. I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, after all. But I’m fairly certain that I’d rather spend forty hours in a car than trust my laptop to checked luggage.

As inconvenient and impractical as they’ve managed to make flying over the past few years, I’ve grudgingly accepted the fact that you have to show up to the airport two hours early so you can stand in a line where they force you to take your shoes off while they ask you stupid questions and ask you to continue showing your driver’s license to every uniformed person you walk past. I’ve accepted the pathetic fact that when factoring in all the nonsensical time inefficiency involved in flying these days, I can drive from here to Atlanta just as fast as I can fly there. And I’ve learned to ignore the insanity of the fact after spending hours making sure that I don’t have any remotely sharp objects on me, they’ll allow me to walk up to the McDonald’s in the terminal and order hotcakes that come with butter and a knife.

I’ve accepted all this meaningless nonsense (none of which could possibly be contributing anything material to actual airline safety) as being something that it’s easier to simply accept than be frustrated by. But if the US follows the UK in banning iPods and laptops from being carried onto flights, then it’s time for us to just shut down all the airports, and sell off all the airplanes as scrap metal, and admit that this flying thing isn’t working out for our society anymore. It would also represent an incursion into our freedom that I would not be content to take lying down. Regardless of party, platform, or any other considerations, I will automatically vote against any candidate going forward who even so much as hints that he/she thinks it’s acceptable to ban iPods and laptops from planes.

Maybe it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but I consider it the straw that would finally break this jaded flyer’s back. I’m not suggesting that you start calling your Senators just yet, but this may end up being an issue where the world’s fifty million iPod users (and tens of millions of laptop users) may have to come together to slap some sense into some people in charge of flying who have long ago what that is.