When you pass in to the secure airport area, the attendent can provide you with a small box in to which you can put your lighter,your pocket knife, nail clippers and other "illegal" objects. Thislittle box is then put in a sack and taken in to the pilots cabinof the aircraft, and re-distributed on exit from the secure areaof the landing airport.
Whichever airline does this first, it will steal the business from all the others who are pursuing these annoying rules to stop me from carrying a pocket knife, a laser pointer in my bag, scissors, a nail clipper, a leatherman and a lighter in my pocket/carryon. Rather the industry has pursued this terrorist policy without trying to make it possible to be an innocent civilian with a pocket knife.
How hard can it be to make a set of small boxes and let people use their boarding pass to create a label right at the security checkin, so they are not inconvenienced. This is especially annoying for smokers who are now gonna lose the ability to carrya lighter as well. The sooner the airline industry gets off the back of their passengers, the faster their profits will rise. It seems rather their bent on driving people away with petty harassment.
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If it is a valuable collector knife, lighter or whatever, possinbly, but genreally, you garden variety knife is to cheap to bother with that service.
Actually, I carry in my pockets/handbag the following thathave to now be annoyingly checked:
Pocket knife: 2.5 inch smith & wesson: 30 dollarsgreen laser pointer for presentations: 250 dollarslighter: 1 dollarmakeup scissors: 10 dollarsnail clippers: 1 dollarhandbag knife (for fruit & cheese) 4 inches: 50 dollars
All these items are normally on my person, and i don't likeputting them in baggage, as i use them all, regularly.I find it very annoying to have to put them in baggageBut just to make the point, my "illegal items" total over300 dollars, not something ya just throw away in the bin.
That is a brilliant idea. Of course this should be a free service, it really doesn't cost the airline that much more and makes life so much easier for the passenger. Small change to that procedure would be that the bag goes into the cargo hold. And you should be able to create your 'box' at check-in, thereby bypassing any issues with the TSA and security checks. Of course you can put these items into your luggage if you are checking in luggage, so this would really be of much more use to people who otherwise are not checking in anything.
Another variation might be to provide a box that only the airline can unlock. This way you would be forced to actually give the box the the flight attendant to insure that it gets opened when you arrive. Or quit carrying all this stuff. I travel every week and the only thing I really miss is my nail clippers. (Which I usually buy at the CVS on the way to the hotel.)
even the cheap'st of lighters can have amazing centimental value for example bic's bic lighters are less than 1$ a peice but if you have one for a while you wouldent sell it for 10 dollars-There is even a saying for when a bic gets stolen "being bic'd" In context "I got Bic'd".
if i were to think the way the airline industry would, maybe they dont allow what you are suggesting because they would rather have nothing on the flight that could be of danger to the flight. you would never know who could get there hands on whatever the pilots are storing.
Good idea, but it would be easier for the airlines to realize that no one will ever hijack a plane with a knife again - even with a 10 inch blade. The old mindset was "just go along, they will get their ransom and let you go". Now we all realize, like they did on flight 92, that it is better to die fighting than to let terrorist fly a plane into a building and kill thousands of more people. I would certainly do everything, including giving my life to prevent that again.
cool, cool idea.. fly a lot... i've seen a guy have this really, really nice, expensive lighter found and he couldn't keep it... he needed to make the flight and there wasn't any way for them to hold it for him... they also made a big deal about my younger sister's pair of scissors... lol...
I had a small keyring-type knife taken off me once, I had carred it on dozens of times without anybody objecting, and they let me go back out again and post it to myself and come back in again. That is a good system.
What is really annoying is inconsistency. Some airports allow some items, some don't. I've even been on flights where they ban all knives, use only plastic cutlery in the airport after security, then had a meal served to me on the plane with real metal knives and forks!
I'm sure I can create as much damage to your neck with a plastic fork as with a metal one.
You can always put things you know will get refused in you're checked-in luggage (Except if you are travelling light with just hand baggage).
Just stop this paranoia and have consistent rules.
Next time it will be something different.
Nice idea and I support it, BUT it doesn't work for lighters. The problem with fuelled lighters is not the risk that terrorists might set fire to the plane, it is that they are prohibited from paassenger flights under international civil aviation rules as dangerous cargo because there are cases of them accidentally starting fires in flight. So you are not just not allowed to have it in your pocket, if it has fuel in it then it is not allowed anywhere on the plane, including -- in fact especially! -- a locked box in the cockpit. They were banned in most countries in the early 90's, the USA really dragged its heels until they started banning things left right and centre after 9-11.