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So what you are saying is that the airlines arent losing enough money? There will be plenty of posts ignoring the fact that airlines lose money.

Except airlines aren't losing money. See: Airlines had second-most profitable year ever in 2017

  2017 Net Profit: 15.5 billion

  IATA - Another Strong Year for Airline Profits in 2017

From http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2012-12-06-01.aspx, we find this tidbit that gives you a sense of how crazy big the US airline market is, even given the lack of nearby international destinations...

By 2016, the top five countries for international travel measured by number of passengers will be the United States (at 223.1 million, an increase of 42.1 million), the United Kingdom (at 200.8 million, 32.8 million new passengers), Germany (at 172.9 million, +28.2 million), Spain (134.6 million, +21.6 million), and France (123.1 million, +23.4 million).

So we're going to exchange that remote possibility for the prospect of putting all those lithium batteries in the hold?

2016: The international regulations applicable to air shipments of lithium batteries have changed. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council has approved amendments to the lithium battery provisions in the ICAO Technical Instructions. Compliance with the new regulations is mandatory effective April 1, 2016. These amendments include:

Passenger Aircraft Ban for Lithium Ion Batteries: All shipments of lithium batteries without equipment are prohibited as cargo on passenger aircraft. As a result, all lithium ion battery shipments must display the Cargo Aircraft Only label. Due to UPS's reliance on passenger aircraft to transport packages in some parts of its network, this change will restrict the origins and destinations available for lithium ion batteries. This limitation does not affect lithium ion batteries packed with or contained in equipment.
State of Charge Limits: A 30 percent state of charge (SOC) limit on lithium-ion cells and batteries, including Section II cells and batteries. This does not apply to batteries packed with or contained in equipment.
Restrictions on Package Quantity: A shipper is not allowed to offer more than one Section II package (batteries only) per consignment.
Restrictions on Overpacks: Overpacks may contain no more than one Section II package - 8 cells or 2 batteries - (batteries only).
Battery Package Separation: A shipper must offer lithium battery shipments (batteries only) separately from other cargo.

These amendments are detailed in a lithium battery update document found on the International Air Transport Association (IATA) web site: http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/c....

If you're talking about 'cost-plus' pricing where the seller adds a fixed margin on top of the costs that go into producing something, this is only one of a number of pricing strategies. Even in cost plus, there's no (and has never been) any arbitrary figure of 10% set based on morality or respectability. The price of a product or service is always what the market will bear. Profit margin in the diamond industry is as high as 30%. The airline industry on the other hand considers 5% cause for celebration.

If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently?

The restrictions are on shipping them on passenger airplanes. You can still fly them around on a cargo plane, where the tolerance for risk has always been significantly higher.

If these are lithium ion batteries would it be possible to ship them by air given all the shipping restrictions that are placed on lithium ion batteries currently?

The restrictions are on shipping them on passenger airplanes. You can still fly them around on a cargo plane, where the tolerance for risk has always been significantly higher.

Incidentally, the company I fly for has made significant effort to lessen the likelihood of this kind of error. Our performance is done by a centralized loadplanner and SCAP (Standardised Computerised Aircraft Performance) http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/workgroups/pages/scaptf.aspx. QANTAS apparently aren't using this. One feature alerts the pilots if they have requested data for a weight that is unexpected, but it still gives us the data. It essentially says "is this really what you wanted because I don't agree that is what you weigh."

The Cabin OK guideline is smaller than the size set by most airlines as their maximum acceptable for carry-on baggage. Thus, passengers with Cabin OK carry-on baggage can travel with a greater assurance that it will be acceptable across the different airline requirements. And, when travelling on a participating airline there is a further benefit: those bags with a Cabin OK logo will have a priority (determined individually by each airline) for staying in the cabin should its cabin capacity be exceeded and some baggage need to be moved to the hold.

What they're trying to say is the following: thanks in part to airlines charging for luggage, passengers often encounter situations where the plane is full and some bags are gate-checked, at no additional cost to the passenger. On some of the smaller aircraft, many "perfectly legal"-sized bags are out of necessity gate-checked. The "Cabin OK" logo is IATA's way to signal that, barring exceptional circumstances, that bag need never be checked at the gate. The idea is that the gate agent need only grab the trolleys without the logo to ensure space on a full flight.

Bad form, I know, but here is the link to their membership:

https://www.iata.org/about/mem...

I copied it into Excel and there were 256 records, 2^8.

The IATA is asking for change. Can they make it happen?

They are, at first, a considerable global consortium of airlines, possibly in the realm of super-villians (given the global nature).

But, they only charge $15,000 USD per airline annually ($30,000 USD to join).

https://www.iata.org/about/mem...

Further, they have 256 member airlines from all around the globe (US based majors included).

So, they have a guaranteed annual revenue of $3.84M USD (excluding application and acceptance fees, non-recurring).

And that means they cannot be super-villians. It's a global organization, and they don't make enough money to buy a single US politician.

Per Open Secrets, US based airlines spent over $30M USD on lobbying and Federal election's in 2014.

http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...

I wish the IATA luck with the changes it wants.

But they are not super-villians.

The summary is completely misleading.

According to TFA, thermal-lie detection, the dog clone, the bluetooth passenger tracking and the behavioral detection officers are in no way linked to IATA's vision of the checkpoint of the future. They are just independent developments in transport security but nonetheless irrelevant to IATA.

For everybody's reference IATA is owned and funded by private airline companies. They are not government funded in any way IATA's website

Well, If I'm reading http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/economics/fuel_monitor/Pages/index.aspx right, jet fuel is about $2.968/gal

Ipad: 11,000 x $499 (source) = $5,489,000
Jet fuel saved/year: 326,000 x $2.968 (source) = $967,568

So, $5489000 % $967568 = 5.672986291 years to pay off.

And that's not even counting training, maintenance, power (they need to be charged you know), replacements (dropped, batteries, lost, etc).

Well, If I'm reading http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/economics/fuel_monitor/Pages/index.aspx right, jet fuel is about $2.968/gal

Ipad: 11,000 x $499 (source) = $5,489,000
Jet fuel saved/year: 326,000 x $2.968 (source) = $967,568

So, $5489000 % $967568 = 5.672986291 years to pay off.

And that's not even counting training, maintenance, power (they need to be charged you know), replacements (dropped, batteries, lost, etc).

Jet Fuel Price Monitor

According to google's conversion (YMMV), 1 Oil Barrel = 42 gallons.

$124.60/42 = 2.96 (which matches the cents/gal column. I wasn't sure if that's what it meant so I did it by hand, since I've never seen 'cents' abbreviated 'cts').

Either way, the point is the same: it's cheaper than regular grade auto fuel by 17% (local prices as of yesterday).

Or at least I'd hope they'd use statistics that make sense. What are we to read of "1 in 28 million" when there will be 2.75 billion airline passengers next year? Does that mean no regulation of laptop batteries will cause 100 airline deaths? Obviously not. The article's 'being on a flight with someone injured by a battery' quotation? First, what on earth does that mean on its own, but does that mean that only 1 person injured by a laptop will fly just once, since most planes hold 100-ish passengers?
 
The sheer incomprehensibility of this statistic convinces me this is either meant as irrational shock journalism or ignore-the-man-behind-the-curtain reassurance.

As you can see in the amendment I've quoted above, PHMSA distinguishes between "lithium metal battery" and "lithium-ion battery." This is consistent with the terminology used in discussing hazardous materials and lithium related battery technologies. See, for instance, http://www.iata.org/NR/rdonlyres/31C08011-1A1E-49D6-A2D8-3D21A9DE887B/0/GuidanceDocumentonthetransportofLiBatt_2009V1.pdf .

Further, this January 4, 2010 rule-making didn't substantively change the law in Section 172.220, because all it did was remove an incorrect citation from the rule which was previously put into force on January 14, 2009.

Explains PHMSA:

This section specifies the conditions for transportation of
internal combustion engines, vehicles, and mechanical equipment and
battery-powered vehicles and equipment. In the January 14, 2009 final
rule, we clarified the provisions for the transport of batteries and
battery-powered devices including the transport of vehicles and
equipment powered by batteries. In paragraph (d), we included an
incorrect reference to Sec. 173.185 regarding an exception to the
prohibition of lithium metal batteries aboard passenger-carrying
aircraft. In this final rule, we are correcting paragraph (d) to
reference the correct provision, specifically, Sec. 172.102, Special
Provision A101.

The given version of "terrorist" is arbitrary and thus subject to change over time - from people who hijack planes with guns and explosives, to apparently nowadays, Iceland, however I think that if you're starting with a number of 1 in 3000 you are so far from reality anyway that what you really want to do is harass innocent people.

Let's look at ALL the hijackings from 1970 to 2000, a total of 924 hijackings. I couldn't find more recent figures quickly, but let's assume that hijackings have continued at a rate of around 30 per year (the average from 1970-2000), that would add another 30 * 9 = 270 hijackings, for a total of 1194 ok I will be generous 1200 hijackings.

Now let's assume (and this is a BIG assumption - I am again going to be very generous) that TEN people, (the terrorists), board the plane for EACH hijacking event. So now we have 12,000 terrorists.

Now let's just look at the passenger data for the LAST YEAR ALONE for the top 5 airlines. They carried last year 420 million people. LAST YEAR. Now assuming that since 1970 till today there have been a total of 12000 "terrorists" (a VERY generous number), when you divide 420 million by that, you would be looking at 1:35,000 people being a "potential terrorist". However do remember that I am only including passenger data for ONE SINGLE YEAR. Assuming again a 90% accuracy, you are still wrongly intimidating well over 3500 people.

If I was to go through year by year and gouge up the billions of people that have been transported by air, the actual chances of the person being screened actually being a terrorist drops to almost zero.

I will not argue against the value of security as a deterrent. However I think that airport security employees should be well aware that they are, more likely than not, harassing innocent people. Therefore all the excessive bullying, posturing, abuse, privacy and rights violations are completely unnecessary in this context. Airline terrorism is NOT a real threat, be it ever so dramatic on the few times when it does happen. Use technology to screen for the obvious, and lock the god damned cockpit door with a solid lock, for the not so obvious.

Not to mention many forms of freight cannot be carried by air at all, and others have extreme restrictions on the amounts that can be carried in a single air consignment. As IATA say, "some things just aren't meant to fly" - like pyrotechnic security attache cases for example (sorry Mr. Bond, you'll have to send that by road/rail/boat).

How does 3x1750Kbps + 3.25Kbps = 8.5Kbps overwhelm anything? BGAN terminals offer 300-400Kbps up, $5K per terminal. $5-10:MB is $19.13-38.25 per hour for voice, to a maximum of $1800:h full continuous bandwidth for 6h transcontinental. That's $114.72-229.44 transcontinental, $363.28-726.56 19h semicircumglobal, max $5.4-10.8K-17.1K/34.2K if they somehow use the full 400Kbps at $5:MB-10:MB for 6 or 19h respectively.

Even if they harden the terminals, that's not going to cost more than $20-30K, if that. Another $20K max to interface it to the fly by wire bus and mics. Transcontinental flights consume that much money's worth of fuel shuttling 210 people NY to LA once.

And that's the most expensive, high quality connections, at small scale consumption rates. I'm sure the airlines could negotiate bulk rates. Or the global industry and governments could buy the defunct Iridium network still hanging around up there, or finally fund Teledesic (or equivalent) now that there's enough traffic to justify the investment. As anchor tenants for a satellite network, they'd have extra capacity to sell as generic networking for all kinds of remote telemetry at sea, at isolated land sites, and in space.

Or they can concentrate on nickel and dimeing us with taxes for searching our shoes, then spend precious hours and days searching for black boxes. FWIW, the black boxes from the 2 9/11/2001 WTC planes "were never found". Maybe there is a competing interest more valuable than reliable telemetry.

Using this and your reasoning, cost per passenger is ~ $127. It would be interesting to look at the price site and ticket prices over time, and see how they correlate. I know the airlines are always bitching about how tickets are going up because of gas prices, but how much of it is true?

There's some standarization going on.

http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/fuel/datastandards.ht m

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/ebusiness/jstart/c asestudies/faa.shtml

This information has been submitted for your perusal.
http://www.iata.org/ps/publications/9105.htm

The magnetic stripe standards, of course. The card is a test card I printed while I was building an ID card system for a client. The front lists the track standard and the allowed chars:

Track 1 (IATA data max. 76 chars):
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS TUVWXYZ[\]^ _

Track2 (ABA data, max 37 chars): 0123456789;;<=>

Track 3(TTS data, max. 104 chars):
0123456789:;<=>

The allowed chars have been encoded onto the stripe on the back.

IATA does not currently allow methanol on aeroplanes as hand luggage, so you wouldn't be allowed to take these onboard anyway. Actually the tech corps are currently trying to develop ethanol-based cells just for this particular reason. I just red about this today from a newspaper, although it was a tabloid, so I won't be giving too high credits for it.

But then again, it is 2.30 am EEST, and I'm currently really drunk (that's why I'm on /., I just can't sleep yet), so anyway... ;-)