Flying with Camera Gear (UK <> Hurghada)

So...

The current rules have been in place now for a few months with no large electrical items in your hand luggage. So no iPads, laptops etc.

Anyone been there and back recently? What did you pack in your hand luggage?

Thinking my standard ThinkTank Roller with my lights, camera housing, arms, batteries, lenses etc etc isn't going to go down well on the return leg....

The rules were dropped in the US (last week?) so hopefully UK will follow suit.

Otherwise, yeah.... Plan B. It's the lenses and camera bodies that would worry me. I've stopped travelling with a laptop and use a 1GB Nexto backup gizmo now. I'm really pleased with it. 3000 RAW images held on it for a safari trip to southern Africa; and about the same to Myanmar a few weeks back. No problem.

https://www.nextodi.com/products/nd2901/

I flew from Amsterdam a couple of days ago and they had signs saying no batteries in hold-loaded luggage. You sure can't win!

I recently flew from TX (USA) to the Bahamas and back with my full OM-D / Nauticam Housing / arms / strobes / lenses / ports / dome port setup in a carry on backpack and they ran it through the X-ray twice but did not have any problems.

My wife's backpack had our regs, dive computers and masks. Along with my 13" iPad Pro with keyboard and her 9" iPad Pro with keyboard... Again they took a second look, but didn't give us any issues.

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I flew back from Hurghada last month. Camera in housing in hand luggage, strobes, torch, tablet & Kindle in hold. I even took an old camera body to hold the spare camera battery as spare batteries are not allowed -all batteries must be fitted in a device. No problems but all the extra security does take a while - even longer for women as they were short of female staff for the pat-downs so an even longer queue...

I am normally flying to/from Cairo - last time beginning of May. All camera gear (ie. housing, lenses, strobes, ports, lights, dive computer etc apart from arms/clamps) was in hand luggage but had to put the laptop and camera body in hold. Though camera was on advice of the check-in person. As it turned out security was not bothered at all as quite a few people had cameras with them. Batteries are a hit and miss - normally I carry both camera and AA ones in hand luggage but on one occasion they made a fuzz about AA ones, on the 2nd security check right before boarding...luckily flight security guy was kind enough to "hold" them for the flight duration and return on landing, otherwise they would have binned them.

That said, Hurghada might be easier, as it is seen more as a tourist airport, they are usually stricter in Cairo...lately they even X-Ray your luggage on the way out, after landing, looking for any electronic devices - but I believe this one is more to stop people bringing stuff for sale without paying custom duties.

Have fun - Egypt is great for diving, now that the hordes of divers have departed, so one does not dive with 500 divers at once

And don't forget to encrypt your laptop...in case it goes "missing".