I took the kids and flew to Chicago for the weekend for what is euphemistically known as “a family emergency.” Ah, so this is what people talk about when they talk about family emergencies.
I don’t recommend them.
Anyhow, I got to experience the joys of traveling by plane. All I can say is, TSA? Frak you very much. We’re stuck in a hot airport and then on a hot, dry-air airplane with nary a flight attendant in sight, let alone a bottle of water. I can’t wait for people to start getting massively ill from dehydration. Starting with little kids, who often need something to drink and they need it now.
They confiscated the kids’ jar of Nutella at the airport. The Transportation Safety Administration: keeping the country safe from European chocolatey spreads since 2006. The funny thing is? They confiscated it on the return flight. Along with the two juice boxes I hadn’t even realized the kids had put in the bag. So I managed to fly one way with these dangerous implements of nutrition and apparently nothing happened.
This no-liquids nonsense has got to end. And it is nonsense. Pure political theater, not based on anything real. Please, we’ve been taking bottles of water/shaving cream/hand lotion on planes for years. We have these verkakete regulations because a couple of bozos in England were talking about doing some massive terrorist attack, not that they had plans, and not that they had realistic plans. (That James Bond thing they were planning on? Not going to happen in real life, guys.) And the authorities found them the old-fashioned way: police work. Not by confiscating a goddamn bottle of Arrowhead Spring Water at the security line.
I can’t figure out what the upside to this is. Business travelers must be pissed having to check all their luggage. Moms with little kids: not too happy either. I assume that this is just to keep us all afraid, ’cause it sure isn’t making us any safer. Which is par for the course with this bunch.
I am totally with you…I flew home from Guatemala a couple of days after the regulations went into place and the screening was completely ridiculous. After a week of being reminded constantly to drink water (and having had a DVT on a long flight, I REALLY like my water) it made no sense to just cut us off. And we were cut off even before we got on the plane because they wouldn’t let us in the gate with anything. But the thing that really got me was that they took my batteries out of my camera. I have NEVER read anything in any TSA piece about batteries and frankly, they missed the 4 batteries that were just in my bag and took the ones in the camera.
Insanity.
It’s not necessarily inconveniencing the hard-core business travellers. Hotels are now supplying all of the necessities and it’s not too hard to smuggle a travel-size deodorant in your pants pockets. Toothpaste is a bit tougher as most of the tubes are metal.
The real losers are the airlines who are having to deal with a 30% increase in the number of checked bags.