Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker : Electronics Ban 'Not Necessary'

Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker : Electronics Ban 'Not Necessary'

Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker is calling out the decision to ban carry-on electronics on flights from the Middle East.

It was "not necessary to frighten passengers," said Al Baker in a broadcast interview with CNN Money. "People who want to disrupt aviation will do it from other places where there is no ban,”
Al Baker is further questioning where the pursuit of security will end.

"If [you] continues this way, at the end of the day you will have people sitting in the airplane with underwear and nothing [else] on them," he said. “In today's day and age, we have so much advancement and detection systems, that we should utilize them and not shoot from the hip.”

In the interview, conducted by CNN Money’s Emerging Markets Editor John Defterios, Al Baker also admits that Qatar Airways has seen a decline in passengers to the United States since the ban, but he called the drop “manageable.”

In a separate interview with Bloomberg, the chief commercial officer for Emirates, Thierry Antinori has said the Middle East’s largest carrier has also seen a decline in traffic to the United States. Although, says Antinori, the decline is being offset by double-digit growth from Chinese travelers visiting the Middle East.

While Middle East carriers may be seeing a dip in traffic to the United States, they are collectively having a very good year. In 2016, for the fifth year in a row, the Middle East passenger growth rate has topped any other global region, according to a press release from the Arabian Travel Market.

Additionally, the UAE, the region's largest aviation market, is expecting a 6.3 percent growth for 2017. In total, IATA is forecasting Middle Eastern carriers will see nearly 258 million new passengers a year on routes to, from and within the Middle East by 2035.