Fun with airport security

So I'm taking the in laws to the airport. I drop them off at the curb. My kid is alseep in the back seat. For reasons I won't go into, my wife gets a gate pass to accompany them to the gate. The flight is delayed, so my wife then is ready to leave rather than wait. In the meantime I'm waiting with our kid at the park and wait lot when our kid wakes up and "I gotta pee!" So I find paid parking and we go inside the terminal to find the bathroom.

I find a bathroom near the secure area exit when I see my mother in law. Then I see my wife. Turns out that she chased down my wife trying to hand her some cash for dinner while my wife wants to avoid her. However, she went past the "no reentry" sign. The police then are around her and she's ticked off that she can't get back into the secure area.

At that point we talk about all of us going inside together and we ask for more gate passes. One gets printed up then one for our kid. We have a bunch of IDs in front of the agent and we have the passes. So we get to the security line and I see that one gate pass was written in my mother in law's name. My wife can be kind of pushy and asks if I can get in anyways. I more or less give up and I'm ready to head back to the car.

Then for whatever reason I see there's no line and I bring the gate pass to the same agent and show her the pass has my MIL's name as the escort and the passenger. So she then prints up a new one in my name.

Now I'm in line emptying my pockets, taking off my shoes and the taking off my jacket. I take out everything but forgot one thing after going through the body scan machine. I had a tiny Swiss Army knife. So they tell me it either gets tossed or I can put it in my car and come back. At that point I don't think I get to the gate in time and just give up.

So that was plenty of excitement for one day. And it makes me thankful that none of this happens when I take the train.

Thanks for sharing, BCL. Like you, I am thankful none of this happens when I take the train.

Maybe someone could hijack a plane with a Swiss Army knife, so it makes a bit of sense to keep it out of the secure area. A Swiss Army knife is also not allowed in the US Capitol. Alright, maybe someone would hunt down a congresscritter and damage him or her. But the Swiss Army knife is also not allowed at the Statue of Liberty. I'd like to believe there is a reasonable motivation for this, but I'm coming up empty. Can someone help me out?

Who knows what can be used for what? The 9/11 hijackers allegedly used small box cutters which were quite legal to carry on board back then.

jis said:

Who knows what can be used for what? The 9/11 hijackers allegedly used small box cutters which were quite legal to carry on board back then.

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Maybe late 80s I had one of those small ones right on a neck strap. I remember removing it at an airport and showing it to the screener before placing it in a box with my other stuff from my pocket. The response was "OK - just a pocket knife" and I was able to take it in no questions asked. I think back then one could actually take a knife on board with up to a 4" blade. At this point one can take a disposable razor on, but I think think they allow stuff like traditional safety razors (with replaceable blades).

Yeah - it was just kind of odd all the comedy of errors. First that I wasn't going in because the kid fell asleep. Then that we had to go in for the bathroom. Then that I saw my MIL looking really frustrated. The other odd thing was that she had both boarding passes and ID too, or otherwise she would have had a tough time getting back in. My father in law was waiting at the gate. He did have a cell phone though, so I suppose we could have told him to go out and back in again if he had held onto the boarding passes.

The agent putting the passenger name as the escort was odd though. My wife even starting barging in when TSA said she needed to wait. I'm not sure why I even thought of trying to get a revised gate pass, but the agent was nice enough to do it after realizing she put the same name down as the escort and passenger.

I'd actually thought of getting a gate pass and left my knife at home. Then I think I picked it up to use the scissors and then instinctively placed it back in my pocket. I was actually a bit worried that I might be arrested, but I suppose a small pocket knife doesn't rise to the level of a firearm.

Hey! The most common thing that is confiscated at TSA and British security checkpoints is bottles of water. They have bins and bins of them by the security checkposts by the end of the day.

jis said:

Hey! The most common thing that is confiscated at TSA

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Tsk, tsk.

The TSA doesn't "confiscate" anything. You have the option of declining to enter security with the Prohibited Item (but maintaining ownership of it), or you can voluntarily fork it over. In fact, the TSA refers to items left at checkpoints as "Voluntarily Abandoned Property".

jis said:

Hey! The most common thing that is confiscated at TSA and British security checkpoints is bottles of water. They have bins and bins of them by the security checkposts by the end of the day.

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I've had those taken when I forgot that they were stashed in carryon. Strangely enough, traveling with a small child meant we could actually take two on board for the kid. However, they placed it in some sort of testing device. One time they were talking about opening a bottle and taking a swab sample. The oddest thing is that I forgot a can of Coke and the TSA agent said, "That can't be for the kid" - although my kid did drink Coke.

We had most of a case of bottled water left in Maui and gave it to the curbside checking agent before I returned our rental car. They had some place they could stash it.

I've actually brought stuff through with a gate pass before like a Zippo lighter (I don't smoke but thought it was cool) and iron powder hand warmers. I was let through with them, but the screener said something about "you realize what could be done with these?" before letting me through.

If you fly often enough you'll eventually notice that the TSA misses all sorts of prohibited items on a fairly regular basis. They also seem to have a major problem with keeping luggage anywhere near the owner. It annoys me when the TSA forces me to remove my expensive electronics and then carelessly jams the bins and dumps everything on the conveyor rollers while I'm still stuck waiting for the sluggish microwave scanner to let me through. I remain convinced that the folks who continue to support the TSA either do not fly or only fly very rarely. Either that or they were home schooled by a naive housewife. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the enormous TSA bottleneck at major airports has become the next soft target. It's a fallacy to think you can prevent terrorism in an open society. Either embrace your openness and accept the statistically slim possibility of intentional disaster or sell out and welcome a dystopic future based on fear and ignorance.

TSA missed THIS a couple of years ago. I got to my destination in Arizona, opened my laptop bag an VOILA! There was my keys, AND Gerber Knife!

More Security Theater from the Gang in Blue!

Their nickname, Thousands Stand Around, is so appropriate!

BCL said:

Strangely enough, traveling with a small child meant we could actually take two on board for the kid. However, they placed it in some sort of testing device. One time they were talking about opening a bottle and taking a swab sample. The oddest thing is that I forgot a can of Coke and the TSA agent said, "That can't be for the kid" - although my kid did drink Coke.

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Ugh. THAT machine.

I recently travelled from Mexico to Seattle via LAX. While in Mexico I bought a couple of nice bottles of tequila for cheap at the duty free store. Since I had to change planes at LAX the employees packed the bottles up into "transit bags."

For those who don't know, "transit bags" are special plastic bags that have a tamper-evident seal and a serial number. Inside the bag, in addition to the bottle of liquor, they put a receipt that shows what you bought, where you bought it, who you bought it from and the serial number of the bag they packed it into. It's a system so complex... only government agencies could have thought it up.

I figured there would be no problem taking these through the checkpoint at LAX... WRONG. The TSA immediately set aside the bottles additional screening.

After 15 minutes of waiting around... the one TSA screener on duty who was able to use the special bottle scanning machine showed up. He took our bottles to the machine and then left for a couple of minutes to find a roll of special TSA tape (not kidding, it exists). He cut open our bags, placed it in this machine that made a lot of beeps and one would assume did some sort of scanning magic (I'm not convinced it did anything at all). When the display on the machine turned green, he placed the bottle back in the bag and sealed it up with the special tape.

All told, it probably took 25 minutes for the TSA to determine that two sealed bottles of tequila, in sealed tamper-evident plastic bags with individual receipts... were indeed tequila.

I took a bottle of wine through security once. I had a wine bottle and a water bottle in my bag and had compeltely forgotten to repack them in the check-in luggage. At the screening I was asked to take out the water bottle and leave it there which i duly did. It was only when I got home that i realized the wine was still in my bag.

Sometimes being absent minded has its advantages.