US lifts ban on electronics on flights from Istanbul

On July 4, 2017, Turkish Airlines announced that the United States would lift the ban on electronics on flights coming from Istanbul in preparation for the next day.

"As of today, we will put another embargo, another crisis behind it," airline chief Elker Essy told reporters in Istanbul.

US security officials will inspect security at Istanbul's Ataturk airport before the first flight to New York on July 5, 2017, the airline's press office said.
Turkey began using US tomography tomography machines on a test basis in June, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In March, Washington banned the largest smartphones on US flights from 10 airports in eight countries including Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, citing the threat of bombs hidden in electronics. The United States first lifted the ban on flights from Abu Dhabi on July 2, 2017.

The report comes after the United States unveiled on June 28, 2017 enhanced security measures for flights to the country aimed at preventing the expansion of the ban inside the cabin on laptops. The measures will affect 325,000 passengers, about 2,000 daily commercial flights to the United States, on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries. Britain followed suit with a similar set of restrictions.