December 23, 2004

Don't fly with pointy objects!

The local news people periodically do a story about the banned items that are confiscated by the TSA at our airport. Yesterday's told me there were something on the order of 50-60 scissors, 30-40 box cutters and a couple of hundred other tools of various sorts taken away within the past week. It occurred to me to wonder just how much of that stuff was on board back when I was flying to LA and back every other week?

Why do people need to have these things in their carry-on baggage or on their persons?

Posted by Linkmeister at December 23, 2004 07:41 AM
Comments

I've had a few things confiscated because I just forgot they were in my bag -- like sewing scissors and a screwdriver, for example.

About twenty years ago (i.e. back when security was much laxer) I got busted with a butter knife, swiped from the school dining hall, in my purse ... now that was mortifying.

Posted by: Sue at December 24, 2004 12:23 AM

I've lost about four pairs of scissors this way... but many more have made the various boardings so it's always worth the try. I need the scissors for knitting or stitching whatever project I take on board so I don't go stark raving mad from the boredom of the flight. I've never lost a pair of knitting needles to the TSA, although I suspect it's more due to the fact that the needles I use while traveling are plastic than sloppy TSA searching. If I was a terrorist, I'd learn to kill with my hands because they can't confiscate those.

Posted by: Karan at December 24, 2004 01:05 PM

Hey, Karan - thank you for answering a question I had in the back of my mind for a while now - 'How to fly with my latest crochet project?' (and not have things confiscated.) I haven't flown since before 9/11 and plan going to Cancun next month...

The answer seems to be a plastic crochet hook and a project that is large enough to keep me busy for 4 hours, but doesn't use more than one color so I don't need to cut anything. ;-)

Posted by: CNL at December 27, 2004 07:49 AM

I decided to print out extra copies of the latest TSA announcement on knitting needles just in case. While I didn't have to pull the copies out, I felt a little better having 'proof'.

Posted by: shari at December 29, 2004 06:35 PM