Fly Emir8s – and get your non-profit’s 20 iPads confiscated
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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I hope you report them all as stolen and brick them all so that they can’t make use of them.
Contact Emir’s PR department, with information about your charity, and the work that you do. Talk to them about what happened.
Invite them to sponsor your charity, replacing the iPads so you can continue, and perhaps even working with you for future travel needs.
I would imagine that they would likely prefer to try to punt this onto the customs officials and appear to be the good guy here, and for an organization like Emir, 20 iPads is roughly nothing.
I’m having a hard time seeing how this isn’t just straight up grand theft
Your next step would be to lock the iPads down, then they just become paper weights.
Threaten their PR department “give our stuff back or we will release this in social media and all over the news”
Stealing from a NGO will surely make them look good
Idk if that’s the reason but when i checked Emirates it says “Each passenger is limited to a maximum of 15 personal electronic devices.”
That does suck though, i hope you can get replacements or even a way to get your devices back.
Edit
I don’t know why i didn’t include this before but it also says “Personal electronic devices (PEDs) should be packed separately and not taped or attached to another electrical device. For security reasons, the authorities may confiscate items that are improperly packaged or that exceed the maximum limit of 15 PEDs per passenger.”
While we’re at it [https://www.emirates.com/de/english/before-you-fly/travel/dangerous-goods-policy/](https://www.emirates.com/de/english/before-you-fly/travel/dangerous-goods-policy/)
Full transparency
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Just want to say this whole thing is bizarre, including the fact that they can just confiscate your property if it exceeds their limits rather than refusing to put it on their plane.
Sounds like something the press of whichever country you live in would enjoy
“Each passenger is limited to a maximum of 15 personal electronic devices. Personal electronic items (PEDs) should be packaged separately and not taped or attached to another electrical item. For safety reasons, authorities may confiscate items which are inappropriately packaged or if the number of items carried exceeds the limit of 15 PEDs per passenger.”
https://www.emirates.com/us/english/before-you-fly/travel/dangerous-goods-policy/
Pro tip: if you’re doing something out of the ordinary, read the rules first. I would have been concerned purely based on airlines having maximum battery capacity limits, or the idea that it looks like commercial goods being transported.
Guess it was the batteries…
You’ve had some good suggestions already, I hope you can recover the tablets or get reimbursed and continue the work you do!
If you are flying around with tech like that you should know that many places don’t allow these items to be checked though! A friend of mine works in mobile app integration, he flies often with 10-20 smartphones and gets a ton of strange looks and “random” searches. Small price to pay for not losing tech to the checked baggage goblins though
I don’t understand how the airline just steals your stuff and gives you a card.
20 iPad batteries store about 2.16 megajoules of energy. That’s equivalent to about 0.5kg TNT. When you pack the iPads together in close proximity, like what OP was doing, a battery fire in one unit could quickly spread to the other 19.
Emirates. You can say it. You’ll be ok.
#EMIRATES
Blow this up and make it a massive PR issue for them “Emirates Interfering with Public Health Initiatives in Poor Countries” is not a headline they want
This is a post for LinkedIn, Facebook, IG etc. name and shame so they change they tune.
Emirates
Why not say Emirates
Get your embassy involved and send some public messages to the airline on other social media platforms too.
Lithium batteries are not allowed to be in checked baggage on almost any airline because of the fire risk. From the Emirates site:
Batteries spare/or loose, including lithium metal or lithium ion cells or batteries, for portable electronic devices must be carried in carry-on baggage only. Articles whose primary purpose is as a power source, e.g. power banks are considered as spare batteries. These batteries must be individually protected to avoid short-circuit. Each passenger is limited to a maximum of 20 spare batteries.
Another reason to never fly Emirates and via Dubai.
Did the airline confiscate them or did customs confiscate them?
Did you fill out the appropriate paperwork to import the devices?
Bringing one tablet into a country for personal use is on thing, bringing 20 tablets requires customs approval.
Honestly this seems like a skill issue.
Are you allowed to check in devices with batteries though?
Emirates? i’m sorry why the fuck did you spell it like that exactly?
Funny thing is: You actually seem to have brought the right case for it. If you would have put appropriate locks on it, it probably wouldn’t have been worth the effort to them. Rule of thumb is, you should spend 10% of the total value on security. These devices start at 400€, times 20 makes 8000€, so you should have spend about 800€ on locks. At that price you could get something custom-cored that’s power-tool resistant and practically impossible to drill.
Flying Emirates, I assume you went to an Islamic country. From experience: They do get upset about everything. I once brought cinnamon stars, which is a popular Christmas treat here, but being six-sided stars it rustled their jimmies and they got confiscated. Don’t fuck around when traveling to Islamic nations. We do get told to be open-minded, but quite frankly, they are just fucking nuts.
#EMIRATES AIRLINES
Why do you misspell the airline? This is theft.
Unfortunately Ipad has ion lithium batteries and it can enter in spontaneous combustion without warning. Each country has it own dangerous good regulation and every airline should follow it. If you are carrying this amount of iPads it can be considered as cargo, not a personal luggage, it should be dispatched as cargo and follow some restrict package regulations, but just if the country regulation and the airline allows ion lithium batteries be transported as cargo on passenger airplanes.
Just to make clear, it really doesn’t matter why you’re carrying this amount of PEDs, ion lithium batteries fire can easily put down an airplane, as the fire extinguishing equipment onboard of airplane cannot put down this kind of fire.
> Emir8s
Can’t tell if you’re spelling it this way to be cutsie or if you’re trying to avoid using the actual name, but I think you’d be better off actually spelling it properly so it will turn up in search results. Big corporations pay PR firms to look for stuff like this on social media and message boards and solve potential PR problems, and this would be a prime example of a time where that might come in handy. Spelling it stupidly like that isn’t helping you here at all.
The police did what?