Originally Posted by
Ian W
I read that the reason for the specific airports chosen was that terrorist sleeper security were in place to 'allow' pax through with devices that would otherwise be picked up. This justification was obviously untrue if there is a blanket ban. The ban is a tacit admission that the security at airports in insufficient.
Number one rule of intelligence: don't betray your knowledge by acting on it carelessly.
If there really were specific airports with terrorist sleepers on the staff, the last thing one would want to do is highlight one's knowledge of that by picking on flights from that airport... However, I don't think there's any need to obfuscate that knowledge that by picking on an entire continent's airports.