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Middle Eastern airline fights electronics ban by subtweeting Trump

Don't know what to do on a 12-hour flight with a laptop? 'Pretend tray table is a keyboard.'

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Ana Valens

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 23, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 7:48 pm CDT

Earlier this week, the White House banned nine airlines from eight Muslim countries from carrying most electronic devices on flights to the United States. The ban begins Saturday, and electronics like laptops, cameras, and tablets must be placed into checked baggage for flights; smartphones and medical devices are excluded. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates will be affected by the ban, and the United Kingdom later announced their own version, directed at Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Royal Jordanian Airlines, which hosts flights to and from various areas affected by the ban, has decided to respond with a new strategy: subtweeting the president of the United States. The airline began fighting back with a fun poem satirizing the sheer number of bans the Trump administration has been pushing out. And the jokes grew from there.

One tweet with over 600 retweets points out that passengers should “think of reasons why you don’t don’t have a laptop or tablet with you,” suggesting that the ban makes no sense to begin with.

And of course, there’s a little bit of self-deprecating humor, because who doesn’t appreciate that.

Royal Jordanian has been using its Twitter account to both keep passengers informed as well as satirize the White House’s move to limit and ban travel from various Muslim-majority countries. In an earlier tweet, the company also poked fun at the “Muslim ban,” offering discounted prices for U.S. flights as well.

Suffice to say, posters were happy to see the tweets, with many praising the company’s humorous marketing approach to something that can be perceived as rather dark.

https://twitter.com/Jihad_Barakat/status/844930524133146627

H/T Gizmodo

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*First Published: Mar 23, 2017, 12:07 pm CDT

Ana Valens

Ana Valens is a reporter specializing in online queer communities, marginalized identities, and adult content creation. She is a former Daily Dot staff writer. Her work has appeared at Vice, Vox, Truthout, Bitch Media, Kill Screen, Rolling Stone, and the Toast. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and spends her free time developing queer adult games.

Ana Valens