So I'm going to be in london with my laptop at the end of the month. when I leave london to head back to the US (departing from Heathrow) will I be able to take my laptop on the plane or will I have to pack it in some sort of bag and check it? THis would require me to bring some sort of locked and padded bag with me so i'd love to know before hand.
thanks so much.


Nothing stopping you carrying a laptop onto the plane - just that you are only allowed one bag through UK security. If you checke the Heathrow Airport website they have several pages of information on the subject

UK airports are the only place I've so far been to in Europe which is really strictly applying the one bag rule - even a newspaper in a plastic bag will count as a second bag, so make sure you can squeeze everything in! No problem at all to take a laptop, but you will need to take it out of your bag to go through the X-ray machine separately - so it's worth making sure it's on the top. Queues are absolutely horrendous at UK airports at the moment (probably more of a security risk in itself, but that's another question...) so make sure you allow plenty of time to get through...

As above, make sure it will fit in your 1 carry on bag. You will absolutely NOT be able to take 2 bags through security despite anything your airline will tell you.

I was on another forum and someone pointed out that with a laptop you can get more than one bag worth of stuff through security
When you take the laptop out of the bag for it to be X-Rayed separately then the space left in the bag can be filled by other items, then once through security you take the extra items out & put your laptop back in
sounds nuts but folk say it works