Confiscated at the airport

[+ Charlie]

15 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

Considering they stopped making the DC3 in 1942, that plane must have been quite old in 1972!!

It was older than I was.

[MikeBiDude]

3 bottles of some fairly decent California wine that I was taking on a trip to Mexico. TSA was fairly new and I completely forgot about the liquids prohibitions. Proceeded to my Alaska Airlines gate, and found my first cousin working as gate agent. Told her my tail of woe, later in the day she reclaimed my three bottles from TSA on her way home from work!

[RadioRob]

The item was not confiscated, but I was traveling with a friend who is a drag queen...  he had his breast plate in his carry on bag.  Apparently they did not like his hairspray (it was just over the max allowed size), so the bag was pulled for manual inspection.   

The agent specifically asked if there was anything "sharp or dangerous".  My friend answered no...  so upon opening the bag, this pair of woman's titties are sitting right up on top.  The guy literally jumped back and said "whoa!  I thought you said there was nothing dangerous in here!" 

My friend's response was "They're silicone and not sharp in any way...  and you tell me how they're dangerous?" 

The hairspray was removed and we were allowed on our way.  But I'll never forget the look on the TSA officer's face...  I wish it was recorded!

[FewBricksShy]

On 4/16/2022 at 6:23 PM, purplekow said:

On my way home from Palm Springs, in the Phoenix airport, I had an item confiscated for the first time.  I had a half a tube of tooth paste which was deemed to contain too much liquid.  The agent was insistent on telling me methods I could use to reclaim the item even after I had told him several times to just keep it. 

Anyone else have items confiscated while traveling?  

Very same thing pre-COVID. I said I’d buy toothpaste where I was going. I wonder how many planes have blown up because someone took 3.5 instead of 3.4 oz. of toothpaste with them…

[mike carey]

The way I've understood, and seen the liquid container rule enforced is that it applies to container size not to the content remaining in it. Thankfully that rule was short lived here for domestic flights. It does apply on international flights so Australians aren't always aware of it on those trips.

I've never had any problem with the TSA when I've had an empty water bottle so the trigger appeared to be whether the container was obviously empty. I was caught once having a small roll-on of sunscreen that I'd forgotten was in my back pack so it wasn't in a zip-lock bag. All they did was fish it out of my pack and check it out (it was fine).

[FewBricksShy]

Is there any evidence that planes have blown up because of sunscreen or toothpaste? 

[+ azdr0710]

52 minutes ago, FewBricksShy said:

Is there any evidence that planes have blown up because of sunscreen or toothpaste? 

this is a cool little thread.....let's stick to the topic and not see this banished to the depths of the Politics subforum....thanks........

[Guest]

2 hours ago, FewBricksShy said:

Is there any evidence that planes have blown up because of sunscreen or toothpaste? 

"Robert Wessel
Answered Aug 4, 2019
Originally Answered: What is the reason behind the limit on liquids on an airplane?
It is possible to produce the explosive TATP from fairly innocuous looking liquids (acetone and hydrogen peroxide). Fear of that led to the liquids ban. This was based on a fairly imaginary terror plot in 2006. The plot appears to be have been real enough (yes, they wanted to blow up an airliner), but the technical aspects were not (not going to happen with acetone and hydrogen peroxide).

Fortunately, making TATP is not, as keeps happening in the movies, just mixing a few liquids together, rather you’d have to set up a small lab with beakers, reactors, tubes and whatnot down the aisle of an airliner, and work it for a few hours to make some actual quantity of TATP even if you had the precursor chemicals.

So basically, no actual reason."

[Epigonos]

Keep in mind that although the establishment of the TSA was supposedly to prevent plane hijackings and bombing the reality was and is that it was created to lower unemployment.  I did indeed hire many who had not been employed for an extended period of time.  Multiple tests over the years have shown that a determined terrorist could evade TSA searches and bring dangerous items on board. 

[+ nycman]

9 hours ago, Epigonos said:

Keep in mind that although the establishment of the TSA was supposedly to prevent plane hijackings and bombing the reality was and is that it was created to lower unemployment.  I did indeed hire many who had not been employed for an extended period of time.  Multiple tests over the years have shown that a determined terrorist could evade TSA searches and bring dangerous items on board. 

The hard cold facts are that nothing TSA is doing today
would have stopped even one of the terrorists on 9/11.

Think about that the next time you pass through the 
Epic quagmire we’ve created at the airports. 

Secure cockpit doors on the other hand?
They're great….until the copilot goes bananas while the captain is taking a dump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

[Luv2play]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:29 PM, Charlie said:

It was older than I was.

I flew in a DC3 in the late 60's which was operated by Quebecair. You got on near the rear and the aisle sloped upward. It was a real workhorse and considered very safe. It wasn't pressurized as I recall.

[Guest]

On 6/5/2022 at 10:53 PM, nycman said:

The hard cold facts are that nothing TSA is doing today
would have stopped even one of the terrorists on 9/11...

 

Well, they no longer allow people to carry box-cutters on planes, which is probably good, and would have avoided that problem. That being said, I agree with you that the principal way of avoiding such tragedies in the future is simply to not allow terrorists into the cockpit for any reason. The other important way to disrupt dangerous behavior is to have a requirement for an armed air marshal for every 100 or 150 passengers on board. Their job would be to take down anyone displaying threatening behavior. And I also agree that the limitation of carrying liquids through is silly, not supported by science, and just another one of those opportunities to show that one is "doing something" even though that something is completely ineffective at doing anything useful. 

[+ nycman]

37 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

 

Well, they no longer allow people to carry box-cutters on planes, which is probably good, and would have avoided that problem. That being said, I agree with you that the principal way of avoiding such tragedies in the future is simply to not allow terrorists into the cockpit for any reason. The other important way to disrupt dangerous behavior is to have a requirement for an armed air marshal for every 100 or 150 passengers on board. Their job would be to take down anyone displaying threatening behavior. And I also agree that the limitation of carrying liquids through is silly, not supported by science, and just another one of those opportunities to show that one is "doing something" even though that something is completely ineffective at doing anything useful. 

I think we agree. All they’ve really done is change a rule about what’s allowed. 
How that’s led to the gigantic mess that is the "TSA experience" of today is beyond me.

More hard cold facts, as recently as 2015, TSA agents were failing to identify contraband 
items 95% of the time. The whole thing is a bad joke. A classic example of big 
government getting bigger and more useless every step of the way. 

Personally, I think Air Marshall’s are also useless. How many hijackings have they stopped
since 9/11? I’m pretty sure the number is zero, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.
 Yep, I looked it up…cost?…$1 billion per year…..terrorists stopped?…..ever?……ZERO.