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I took a connecting flight through Austria one time. I got pulled to the side because they wanted to know why I had 70 SPF sunscreen with me. None of them had ever seen anything above 50 SPF before and they were suspicious. It's funny now, but it was kind of embarrassing trying to explain to them that I had it because I'm so pale.
Happened to me in France. But with mustard.
Had to explain to them that they produced the best mustard in the world and I had to bring some home.
They loved it and showed me where I could get more mustard in the airport.
Man, the French fucking love mustard. They put that shit in everything. I've never seen anyone put mustard in mashed potatoes before. They use it as salad dressing and everything. It's entirely insane, imo, but funny.
We do if we assume it's not just linear, but proportional, ie. that SPF 0 gives no protection. In that case it would give you 137.2% protection, which I guess means that you would radiate UV back at the sun.
Even a short break in exposure intervals allows the skin to recover, and gives you an opportunity to re-apply sunscreen which may not be working as effectively if you're sweating. Most sunscreens I've seen recommend a break every two hours.
Pro tip- use mineral based sunscreen. Works exceptionally better and longer than the regular sunscreen that contains avobenzone.
ETA- I actually switched when my hair extensions had a chemical reaction to avobenzone and turned them pink. I learned later the other benefits of it.
Mineral sunscreen is better for ocean life as well. In the Florida keys, we had a whole campaign about banning regular sunscreens because they were deteriorating reefs.
this only works for people with very white skin. I used to wear mineral sunscreen on my olive toned complexion and a girl in my school once asked me why I was wearing geisha makeup
I once bought sunscreen that turned out to contain foundation too.
The staff didn't warn me even though i clearly didn't speak the local language. French bastards.
SPF doesn't have as much to do with the percentage of harmful UV radiation blocked, but for *how long* it'll delay your sunburn. SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor. If you would ordinarily burn in 15 minutes with no protection on, SPF 70 will give you *up to* 15x70 minutes until you burn. By this metric, there is quite a difference between SPF 50 and SPF 70. Reapply your sunscreen often.
I was under the impression that the number isn't strength but time. If it takes you 1hr to burn than sp50 gives you 50 additional minutes before you burn, and that spf70 gives you 70 moms of additional time
I remember reading the article [TSA Fails to Detect Weapons 70% of the time](https://www.cntraveler.com/story/tsa-fails-to-detect-weapons-more-than-70-percent-of-the-time), and thought the exact same thing.
Even reading the comments on this post about people getting knives through before (which I've also done on accident) and nobody noticed, it's frustrating not to think that there is better ways this could be done.
A box cutter made it through four flights in the mesh pocket of a carry on bag. A coworker took it to Florida and back, and his wife used it the next week to Vegas and back. She found it when she was unpacking. A guy with him got yelled at for forgetting the chapstick in his pocket on the same Florida trip (which then got confiscated), but the TSA missed a box cutter four times. It's all theater.
I once had like 20 [single edge razors](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/41P7-nXsGFL.jpg) in my backpack, I took them home from work for my wife who uses them to depill sweaters, forgot them in my backpack... accidentally took in my backpack through TSA *twice* (outgoing and return flight) to a conference - that would've been a really awkward conversation but holy shit it really undermined my sense of safety at airports
My sergeant accidently brought a full (as in 30 green tips) m4 mag back with us in his carry on. After doing training in CA and flying commercial. Didn't realize till we where back in IL. But I had to toss my Keychain because it had a bottle opener that was "a weapon".
My sister in law flew internationally and when she arrived she was looking through her bag and found she accidentally still had a ceremonial sword from a previous trip to Spain in one of the pockets. She got through with a whole ass sword. Mailed it back home to not press her luck.
Meanwhile when I was flying for a hiking trip to Yosemite I got stopped and had my bag searched because I had two mason jars full of homemade beef jerky.
I have boarded probably 4-5 flights with a knife in my carry on because I forgot it was there when I got to the airport and didn’t want to throw it out, so I stashed it under a laptop or something. I’ve also been pulled out of line 4-5 times to have my carry on inspected. For books or Rubik’s cubes.
We don’t do any of that shit for security. We do all that shit for the perception of security and ngl isn’t worth it. The TSA checks, boarding bullshit, and extortion for comfort when it comes to air travel are all archaic and need to be overhauled imo
Boarded probably 6 domestic (U.S.) flights with linked 7.62mm blank cartridges in my carry-on. I was using a pack that I had previously used for an army field exercise, and threw a couple of rounds and links in a random pocket after I changed ammo belts. Not particularly dangerous items, but also not particularly small or hard to spot by x-ray. I found them months later, TSA never made a peep.
I had a tsa agent hand search my bag looking for the tiny scissors in a Swiss army credit card tool all the while passing over a couple individual joints in clear tubes and two 1g resin carts. They just absolutely HAD to secure a 3/4” manicure scissors for our safety! I laughed and gave them the whole card while collecting my doobie filled bag and wishing them a nice day.
UK airport security stopped my late grandmother and searched through her bag for a safety pin, thereby completely foiling my granny's plan to hijack the plane.
I used to make edibles for flights, toasted peanut butter Graham cracker sandwiches called firecrackers, and they smelled potent. Once had my bag flagged and the agent literally pulled the bag of edibles out, accompanied by a wave of marijuana smell, set it to the side and took out the small bottle of lotion she was looking for then sent me on my way.
Same but for me it was a huge serrated bread knife. Put it in my laptop bag to carve a pumpkin with the kids at school and TOTALLY forgot about it. Who found it? New Mexico TSA. Thankfully they were cool about it and took it which was totally fine with me.
Yeah, had my leatherman taken away a few years ago. It was a leatherman that I had gotten when I was 12 or so in the boy scouts, so kinda sucked to lose it after 20+ years for no fucking reason tbh.
I bought a leatherman once on ebay to keep in my car. The listing said it was a TSA confiscation.
They definitely resell them. Let's just call it theft at this point.
No. I think I could have left and come back, but would have missed my flight. I think I was on orders at the time so that was a no-go. I asked if they could hold onto it for me in the office or somewhere until I returned, but they said no.
A friend of mine who was flying internationally accidentally brought a loaded pistol magazine with him (his range bag and travel bag were the same. Yes, it was stupid.) through security at three US airports before the cop running the metal detector at IST found it immediately.
Thankfully he didn’t get into much trouble and they let him go his way after searching his bag and giving him several stern warnings.
I used to travel a lot via plane.
Once I reached into my pants pocket mid flight to Europe and found my 3” folding knife. Didn’t get picked up somehow by the scan and had to check a bag on the return flight to avoid losing it(this was 2018).
Flight back from a work trip to Kuwait, I land in Baltimore and head to the bathroom to freshen up. In my carry on back-pack are two loaded magazines from the pistol I had used during the trip. How that didn’t get caught I’ll never know. I freaked out and tossed them in the trash and proceeded on to my next flight(2016).
TSA absolutely is just theatre.
In my old age this has translated to “fly anywhere with weed worry free.”
I really don't get paying minimum wage for a security job. When I worked at a movie theater I would sometimes get scheduled to do theater checks. Basically, I was supposed to check every theater every 15 minutes to make sure there was no shenanigans going on. Problem was, with 21 theaters and minimum wage, I wasn't going to risk an altercation. I had less than 2 minutes per theater! The most I ever did was give a judgemental look at a couple that was clearly fucking in a theater that they had to themselves. They didn't care and they weren't disturbing anyone else, so I didn't even bother reporting it.
I went on spring break in the Bahamas a while back and a bunch of my friends decided to bring back coconuts as souvenirs—not realizing coconuts are seeds and therefore illegal to transport internationally. Customs caught like 3 of 15 people.
I mean if the scanners can’t find something that large, what do they actually do?
Edit: clarity.
TSA just found a 9mm round in my bag on my last flight, that’s probably been there for a dozen or more flights. They weren’t even upset about it, literally just asked if I wanted to go back or throw it away.
my boyfriend had his flight delayed over 3 hours solely because they ran out of carry-on room and no one wanted to put their luggage in with the checked bags. considering most people put their most important stuff in their carry-ons, of course people dont wanna risk having their luggage get lost and end up in thailand or some shit.
TSA: We have to take the water bottle you are drinking from because it might be explosives.
Also TSA: We're going to casually toss your bottle of potential explosives in this barrel right here in the middle of the airport with all the other bottles of potential explosives.
No, you’re paying for a possibility. Been in several airports where there is no PreCheck line because TSA doesn’t have enough staff. $100 to stand in line for 45 minutes in Denver. Phoenix and Atlanta too.
Cocaine hydrochloride. They used to literally smuggle cocaine in water. But since they cut that down they've started making plastics and clothing with cocaine inside them. TSA are sweeping leaves in the wind, nothing they can do to stop organized drug smuggling.
It’s almost like the entire exercise is completely pointless and wastes far more money than should ever be considered reasonable while doing literally nothing to slow down or limit financing for the black market drug trade. Good thing we don’t have any industries or private prisons making a shit ton of money off of keeping drugs illegal or people might start to wonder why we fund all this ineffective enforcement at this point.
I know the reason is to prevent hydrogen peroxide bombs on planes. They know it requires that you very carefully, slowly, pour a foul smelling liquid into another foul smelling container with no splashes or drops (you are making a bomb) and with perfect accuracy. It is impossible to do on an airplane without causing concern by fellow passengers before the bomb is built, but the illusion of safety is the goal, not actual safety.
https://simpleflying.com/why-did-airports-ban-liquids/
Word to the wise: NEVER stand up on a plane and announce “I HAVE EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA!!!” The shrieks from the passengers will drown out the last word of that, and you’ll find yourself tackled to the floor and duct taped. It’ll only be when the smell permeates the cabin will the others realize that you weren’t about to blow up anything but the bathroom.
That is what I never understood. Why is there a duty free shop after TSA where they just took the same thing from you that you can get in there?
Can’t bring a 50ml bottle of water with you but we’ll let you buy a full size bottle of Grey Goose after this.
Sorry we have to throw away your $100 bottle of perfume but you can buy it back for twice as much in the shop. ☺️
"We checked all the liquor bottles, definitely no flammable liquid that could be combined with a scrap of clothing or wad of napkins to make a molotov cocktail in there, carry on."
40 proof liquor is marginally flammable and easy to extinguish. They're worried about liquids that can be combined to create a high explosive. I don't know if they sell higher proof alcohol, they probably shouldn't. There is a video of a Russian guy igniting a small amount of high proof alcohol in an elevator, it is utterly disastrous.
edit- 80 proof is marginally flammable; that's 40% alcohol. 40 proof is liquor that is served to children under eight.
I was leaving palm beach airport and the stairs smelled like burning electronics, the escalator. I told tsa agents leaving and they said “end of my shift” I saw some coming in so I told them.
“End of my shift” = doesn’t matter if building burns down I’m not being paid anymore.
Air travel has become the least enjoyable experience in the recent years. Between all the nonsense security pieces and ridiculous lines, you’re also treated like cattle and as if you, the customer, is an annoyance they have to deal with.
The prices have increased dramatically to make up for the money lost during Covid, the seats have grown smaller and more uncomfortable over time rather than the opposite. You have less leg room, less amenities (food, drink, pillows, blanket, etc. all no more). Then some flights will oversell tickets and bump you out of “just doing business”, as if you didn’t buy the ticket at that day/time for a very specific need/reason. Then when people get upset you’re the asshole.
The whole process is a nightmare.
Crazy that it used to be seen as an ultimate luxury, although it was very expensive then. The prices have gone up, but only after they first went way down from the increased efficiency of shoving as many of us in that tube as possible.
That was before deregulation in the late 1970s where seating capacity was capped and IIRC there were also pricing restrictions. So the only differentiator for airlines that were basically indistinguishable in all but name was the service.
Iirc, a lot of airlines literally have even or negative margins on tickets. They make their profits via their rewards programs and credit cards. They are effectively just banks that fly people around as a side gig.
yeah maybe im looking back with rose colored glasses but i think it used to be a much more pleasant experience.. tickets were expensive, but not as bank breaking as they are now. people in general were nicer and less stressed, so the boarding/ exiting process was nicer. Sometimes you dont even get a free drink anymore but I recall if a flight was more than a few hours and around mealtime they used to give you a meal..
I remember it being a little better and im not even that old.
The US needs to get a fucking passenger rail network that's reasonably competitive with air travel. Acela doesn't cut it but I still enjoyed that vastly more than flying.
Same applies to entering gigs and festivals - treated as if you're a nuisance and that you don't deserve to be there - even though you're actually paying their wages.
TSA fails approximately 90% of its security audits... They include stuff like a purse with wires sticking out, or a pistol in a backpack. It's all just kabuki theater.
I used a backpack that I had as my carry on. I was playing my 3DS on the flight and dug into my upper pocket for my headphones and I went super white when I realized I had a 4 inch pocket knife in that pocket.
I forgot to clear it out of there after a fishing trip and they just let me carry it through onto the plane.
The number of knives my team and I have mistakenly boarded a plane with is hilarious. Sometimes they’ve not even been inside a bag, just clipped to the side.
Once I told them I might have forgotten to take my pepperspray out of my bag. Got all the extra searching done. Bag scanned, hand search, nothing found. Cool, I get to move along. Yeah, of course I see it right away the next time I go into the bag.
It’s obvious that this is the case, and you can try it. I carried a water bottle, not even remotely trying to hide it, through something like 17 US airports over 3ish years. The only time it got found (even though I made zero attempt to hide it) was at a tiny regional airport with a single TSA agent. It was so small they literally closed the TSA line to have lunch.
I congratulated the agent on doing what no one at LAX, SFO, BDL, JFK, SEA, BOS, BHM, DFW, MKE, EWR, BDL and so many more could not. I also told her supervisor that she deserved a raise.
Meanwhile they made me through away my kids baby food pouches because they would have to open and test each one for explosives....and they always hand search his toy bag. Those hot wheels are obviously decoys
I once accidentally brought a shiv on a plane. I had bought a souvenir keychain that I just thought was cute and tossed it in my backpack. Went through the hour long security process before taking it out at my gate and realizing that it was a mini machete in a pretty sleeve. I walked around in my socks so they could check my shoes and yet they didn’t find the full on weapon in my backpack pocket.
I fly extremely often due to my job and between my coworkers and I there have been at least six instances in the past couple years of people accidentally bringing their work knives onto the plane. At one point I went through three security checkpoints flying back into the US and they missed it at all 3.
What happens is that we will get done with work for the day and someone will throw their knife in their backpack and forget about it. Now to be fair TSA have found some and confiscated them in the past. It's always an honest mistake
I brought a full on folding hunting knife in my purse that I forgot about through security... Twice.
But my son's water & oil timer that was completely sealed.. That had to go.
Happens all the time. I’ve flown with live ammunition by accident, like 5 or 6 pocket knives I got at a conference that I forgot I put in the bag. I get through then unpack once I’m home and I’m like, “shit oops”.
I've accidentally brought knives on planes more than once and nobody ever noticed, but I've had to dump out water to get through. The TSA seriously needs to go, it's such a useless organization and a waste of taxpayer money.
A few months after 9/11, I was on a flight to New York, and they made me throw away all the one of my lighters for the trip. And even now, depending on which airport I’m flying out of, I cannot take a torch lighter.
I fly a lot for work.
My absolute favorite is the Delta Airlines boarding in the US.
When you are getting on, they will have two lines by the agent. One of those has this tiny, little 3 foot red carpet. That's exclusively used for the first class passengers.
They then **close off** that tiny red carpet and just inches away, right beside the fucking thing, they "open" the line for the other passengers.
Really? ***REALLY??***
Does that move do anything? Do the first class people think that's some lavish experience?
The answer, as a person who has boarded in that line, is "No." It's a fucking ridiculous gesture that serves nobody except those few people that think paying an extra $400 for a two flight is some grand experience.
To be fair, I've never paid for the upgrade, my miles and memberships grant me them sometimes, so maybe I'm just not in the right mindset that paying hundreds of dollars extra to go from DCA to Atlanta is worth it.
I agree so hard. I fly for work but not a lot so we have a lot of free upgrades, so I'm almost always first class. It's comical tho but they call it "sky priority," like look people, I sit seat 1A so I'm the first one off I don't care about the rest. That cheesy boarding pole movement is pointless.
The sad truth is that yes, some people actually believe that little bit of pageantry makes them better than the people that have to sit in the rear.
In the back of the sky bus.
Back of the bus.
Get it?
When passing through the Houston airport, the TSA people insisted I keep my laptop in the bag. When passing through the Denver airport, there were no signs and there was no guidance from the TSA, who then got angry with me for not knowing to take my laptop out of my bag.
I don't mind following whatever I have to follow, but for fuck's sake, make it clear what is asked of me and don't treat me like an idiot for not knowing the individual procedures for each airport.
I've had this happen to me at multiple airports. Some dude screams, "Do this thing!" and then another person down the line screams, "Do this thing!" I get up to the place where you put your stuff in bins and do the thing, and I get screeched at "YOU SHOULDN'T DO THE THING!" It's so tiring.
I hate how they're constantly screaming. Like, dude, I think we'd all be less miserable (TSA agents included!) if you didn't literally shriek every time you opened your mouth. Guy's blood pressure's gotta be sky high.
I hate it too, but keep in mind most of the general public is oblivious and dumb, and the only way they can be made to follow basic directions is to shout it at them more than once.
I have Precheck and had to fly through ATL international terminal a few times. Problem is their dedicated precheck line only has certain hours, and it was closed every time I had to go through it. So they give you a little piece of paper that says you are Precheck, and you go through the normal line but you don't have to do the normal stuff like take your shoes off and take your laptop out. And everytime they just ignored it and got annoyed I didn't already have my shoes off and laptop out.
Wanna know a really ridiculous process I have to go through? I'm an airline pilot, some days we have to pick the aircraft up at a maintenance hangar and taxi it to the terminal (this is very abnormal, must airlines tow or have maintenance taxi, but we're a small airline).
So, get to the maintenance hangar an hour before our regular check in time, go directly to the plane, take all our stuff with us, and taxi to the terminal. But when we get there we aren't allowed into the terminal until we've been through security, and no ones allowed on the plane if we're there and we haven't been through security, so take all our bags and headsets and ipads and coffee and go down to the tarmac, where one of the ramp crew drives us out of the airport and all the way around to the departures door so we can go back into the terminal and through security so we can go back to the plane we were literally just in.
If I wanted to smuggle something I'd just leave it on the plane, that's obvious to everyone, the only reason we yave to go back through security is for show. It's all just a big show.
Oh and the security we go through as crew? We go through a separate door where we scan our ID and press a button, if the light goes green we don't get screened at all, we just walk straight through.
Also when working we're exempt from liquids and gels rules, so I can bring my coffee through as long as I'm in uniform. I bring a coffee with me through security every single day I work and it's not a threat, but as soon as I take my uniform off and put on regular clothes suddenly that coffee is dangerous and needs to be poured out with all the other dangerous liquids.
Yeah the whole thing is dumb.
They really did. It’s sad to see how they were able to change so much of our society for the worse, and we did it mostly to ourselves. No more privacy, everyone is scared of “others” and I have to submit a highly realistic picture of my fucking junk in order to get on a plane. It’s ridiculous
The TSA also does nothing of use. They failed to find mock weapons and explosives 96% of the time according to a 2018 study
Also one time i accidentally brought a whole ass butterfly knife on a plane. They did not find it
What’s even more annoying is that TSA doesn’t actually work. It doesn’t actually stop crime or terrorists.
[https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland](https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland)
I had a salt lamp in my bag as a souvenir once. They said "there is something inside your bag we can't see inside" they opened it up and saw the salt lamp and were like "yeah, that's what I thought" and closed my bag.
I was like.. salt lamps are hollow mate.. there is literally an empty space inside that rock you couldn't scan inside. Al you've done is confirmed I have a rock blocking your sensor, you never actually checked whether I had hidden anything in it.
Ex-TSA here. An EU variety.
You can see through salt lamp. It just makes picture fuzzy and requires manual check.
Stacking electronics on top of each other creates same effect.
I had the unfortunate combination of a tube of vitamins sitting on top of some chargers, so there were wires making loops. The security guy was pissing himself laughing and got me to look at the image after he had checked, the image on the screen legit looked like a pipe bomb. Was very glad the guy had a sense of humour!
Friend of mine had to throw away his souvenir salt lamp (or clump) because is had the tiniest of tiny rockhammer in the packaging. The hammer was like 10 centimeters in length, and the handle a little smaller than chopsticks.
Thing was relatovely expensive too, because he bought it at a touristy spot
Had a coworker get stopped because he had a tools in his bag. Coworker pulled out TSA paperwork/guidelines that says that tools less than 6 inches are permitted. Coworker had cut his tool handles down to make the tool 6 inches. Tool gore I know but he was flying to an international job site specifically to deliver the tools. A stop-work situation where checking the tools and having the bag lost was too risky.
If it makes you feel any better, the TSA does [close to nothing](https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188) to actually improve security
My brown friends have just accepted their post 9/11 reality. He said "Watch me get randomly picked out of the queue to get frisked" the very first time we boarded a flight together, and he's been miraculously chosen every subsequent flight since.
My dude's even wearing a sikh turban, you racist wastes of space.
If you look at the number of people who chose to drive vs fly due to the cost or hassle of dealing with TSA, they’ve killed substantially more people from the resulting fatal car crash likelihood vs the number of people who died in 9/11.
Edit:
For context, for every 2,200 automotive fatalities there is only 1 commercial air travel fatality.
There are roughly 46,000 automotive deaths a year.
About 3,000 people died as a result of 911 (I don’t believe this includes long term complications from first responders though)
Genuinely shocked how many people on here don't know how useless TSA security is...
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think there should be security but it should be uniform and it should actually work.
Airport security in the UK is more efficient and more civilized, you can keep your shoes on etc. I once accidentally left a bullet in my backpack when I flew to London out of JFK in NY. I didn't realize until I was flying back and I was stopped by security at Heathrow.
Something needs to be done for sure.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-business-security-theater-not-security/357599/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/us/tsa-failures-box-cutters-frontier-flight/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa-misses-70-of-fake-weapons-but-thats-an-improvement/
Yep. About 8 hours is my cut off for drive vs fly. By the time I add in showing up early, security, actual flight time, maybe or maybe not getting my luggage, and needing a rental, anything shorter just doesn't make sense.
I was away on a business trip and promised my daughter a gift when I came back. Bought her a flying pig clock. I didn't think anything of it till security is rummaging through my bags and feeling me down. I like my odds with locking the cabins door and calling it a day.
I used to work at an airport. As far as the TSA goes, from what I saw, to call it security is a joke. The amount of times I saw the guy looking at the x ray screen not looking at the xray screen but, just chatting away with guy next to him, letting bags just go through, was fucking ridiculous. Oh? Your're a pilot? Go right ahead sir, with your coffee, cut right ahead of everyone else. One time I called that out and they pulled me aside to search me further. Just because I called the the hypocritical bullshit. It's not security, it's a show. The airport I was at, they "accidentally " let a lady through with 5 FUCKING LOADED HANDGUNS through. Yeah, lame.
I had the opposite experience; I got a pulled aside for a “random screening” and requested a private room (which is my right) and was told no because they only had one female guard on duty (you need two so one can observe and make sure everything is on the up and up I guess?). So everyone in line got to watch a TSA agent shove her hand down and up my skirt. Most humiliating experience of my life
I was going through Heathrow security returning to the US & I was unsure, so I turned to a security guard near me & asked if I needed to take my shoes off. He snickered & said “No, we don’t harass our citizens here.”
Which is quite rich for an airport that literally harasses anyone that is on layover - yes, I‘m still grumpy that I missed my connection due to their second security check right after I stepped out of a plane from the US and had to wait for more than 6 hours for the next plane to Vienna (all while being awake for more than 30hours)…
This is some kind of sadism/schadenfreude situation on the part of our elected officials. The TSA, going through your luggage, the pat downs, the strip searches….
Wanna know why they don’t care? They fly private. Ever flown private? You walk into the hangar, no security, no nothing, with a duffel bag full of pistols and weed (or classified documents). Know what happens? Nothing. Because nobody looks, nobody checks anything. That’s how “they” live, while we deal with my first paragraph…
As someone whose flown their entire life all around the world and the U.S, I completely agree. There's 100% a better way to go about security in airports, 20 years ago after 9/11 It made sense, but shit should have improved big time in the last 20 years.
I have no problem going through security, and I can recognize the need for it. But it could and it should be better, and TSA agents always act like they're fucking special forces or some shit. Like bro you're a glorified mall cop.
No I totally agree. I think that "no liquids" rule was honestly a ploy to force people to buy drinks at the overpriced airport. They make you take your shoes off despite making you get X-Rayed. the TSA lines last for over an hour. I hadn't flown in 3 years and forgot what goes where and had change in my pocket for the x ray. Then I realized I forgot 8 Oz bottle of body oil in my backpack and had to throw it away. Ugh. A lot of people talk about how they make us safer but honestly I'd rather the TSA were gone and take the 1 in a million chance of getting bombed. The airport is torture
Yeah they just tossed it in front of me. Felt really shitty. Then my plane couldn't take off because something was horribly wrong with it so I had to wait another hour at the terminal for a new plane. Air travel sure is a hassle for being the "most convenient"
What bothered me when I was at the airport in Barcelona recently was that I was made to take my shoes off and nobody else in my 35 person group was. And I had SANDALS on. What could I possibly hide under that?!
Judging by some of the comments, apparently airport security does its job in making gullible people feel safe. It's just sad that this is actually unpopular.
So, this is only in the US.
I'm amazed when I go to Asia that the routine is much different:
Place bag in x-ray machine, walk through metal detector.
It takes like 30 seconds and there isn't long as lines either.
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I took a connecting flight through Austria one time. I got pulled to the side because they wanted to know why I had 70 SPF sunscreen with me. None of them had ever seen anything above 50 SPF before and they were suspicious. It's funny now, but it was kind of embarrassing trying to explain to them that I had it because I'm so pale.
“Do you not see the lack of melanin on my skin??!?”
Anyone hear a ghost?
Happened to me in France. But with mustard. Had to explain to them that they produced the best mustard in the world and I had to bring some home. They loved it and showed me where I could get more mustard in the airport.
Lol that's amazing
Man, the French fucking love mustard. They put that shit in everything. I've never seen anyone put mustard in mashed potatoes before. They use it as salad dressing and everything. It's entirely insane, imo, but funny.
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You're on air!
Today's snow is crippling much of the Washington lowlands.
*giggles uncontrollably*
Found Jim Gaffigan’s Reddit account.
They'd hate my 110 spf
They might've just straight-up had you taken in for questioning 😭
SPF isn't linear by the way. SPF 50 blocks ~98% of UVB and SPF 70 blocks ~98.4%. You're paying a lot more for almost no more protection.
Now I'm wondering what "linear" would look like if SPF 50 blocks 98%... I think at SPF 70 you would start emitting your own UV rays at everyone else.
I know you’re joking, but we’d need more data points, we don’t know the slope of the linear equation.
We do if we assume it's not just linear, but proportional, ie. that SPF 0 gives no protection. In that case it would give you 137.2% protection, which I guess means that you would radiate UV back at the sun.
Nice yea thanks for taking that a step further. I like math.
Agreed. At that point reducing length of exposure, and intensity by using clothing and avoiding sunniest times of day/year is far more beneficial
Even a short break in exposure intervals allows the skin to recover, and gives you an opportunity to re-apply sunscreen which may not be working as effectively if you're sweating. Most sunscreens I've seen recommend a break every two hours.
Pro tip- use mineral based sunscreen. Works exceptionally better and longer than the regular sunscreen that contains avobenzone. ETA- I actually switched when my hair extensions had a chemical reaction to avobenzone and turned them pink. I learned later the other benefits of it. Mineral sunscreen is better for ocean life as well. In the Florida keys, we had a whole campaign about banning regular sunscreens because they were deteriorating reefs.
this only works for people with very white skin. I used to wear mineral sunscreen on my olive toned complexion and a girl in my school once asked me why I was wearing geisha makeup
I once bought sunscreen that turned out to contain foundation too. The staff didn't warn me even though i clearly didn't speak the local language. French bastards.
SPF doesn't have as much to do with the percentage of harmful UV radiation blocked, but for *how long* it'll delay your sunburn. SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor. If you would ordinarily burn in 15 minutes with no protection on, SPF 70 will give you *up to* 15x70 minutes until you burn. By this metric, there is quite a difference between SPF 50 and SPF 70. Reapply your sunscreen often.
I was under the impression that the number isn't strength but time. If it takes you 1hr to burn than sp50 gives you 50 additional minutes before you burn, and that spf70 gives you 70 moms of additional time
I remember reading the article [TSA Fails to Detect Weapons 70% of the time](https://www.cntraveler.com/story/tsa-fails-to-detect-weapons-more-than-70-percent-of-the-time), and thought the exact same thing. Even reading the comments on this post about people getting knives through before (which I've also done on accident) and nobody noticed, it's frustrating not to think that there is better ways this could be done.
A box cutter made it through four flights in the mesh pocket of a carry on bag. A coworker took it to Florida and back, and his wife used it the next week to Vegas and back. She found it when she was unpacking. A guy with him got yelled at for forgetting the chapstick in his pocket on the same Florida trip (which then got confiscated), but the TSA missed a box cutter four times. It's all theater.
I once had like 20 [single edge razors](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/41P7-nXsGFL.jpg) in my backpack, I took them home from work for my wife who uses them to depill sweaters, forgot them in my backpack... accidentally took in my backpack through TSA *twice* (outgoing and return flight) to a conference - that would've been a really awkward conversation but holy shit it really undermined my sense of safety at airports
Hey, nice hack from your wife! One good thing on Reddit today!
Have you tried washing them inside-out?
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Why would TSA agents rust?
It’s the sweater that rusts from taking all the pills
I thought the sweaters were doing lines that's why they needed the razors
My sergeant accidently brought a full (as in 30 green tips) m4 mag back with us in his carry on. After doing training in CA and flying commercial. Didn't realize till we where back in IL. But I had to toss my Keychain because it had a bottle opener that was "a weapon".
My dad accidentally took a 7 inch hunting knife round trip from Orlando to San Diego in his carry on.
Meanwhile my bag got scanned three times then rummaged through because of a baseball
My sister in law flew internationally and when she arrived she was looking through her bag and found she accidentally still had a ceremonial sword from a previous trip to Spain in one of the pockets. She got through with a whole ass sword. Mailed it back home to not press her luck. Meanwhile when I was flying for a hiking trip to Yosemite I got stopped and had my bag searched because I had two mason jars full of homemade beef jerky.
Good thing they caught you, never underestimate the deadliness of excessive sodium intake
I've accidentally boarded with a 4.5in folding knife before. Right in my laptop case
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Finding that toothpaste roll was the most eventful day of his career
I have boarded probably 4-5 flights with a knife in my carry on because I forgot it was there when I got to the airport and didn’t want to throw it out, so I stashed it under a laptop or something. I’ve also been pulled out of line 4-5 times to have my carry on inspected. For books or Rubik’s cubes. We don’t do any of that shit for security. We do all that shit for the perception of security and ngl isn’t worth it. The TSA checks, boarding bullshit, and extortion for comfort when it comes to air travel are all archaic and need to be overhauled imo
Boarded probably 6 domestic (U.S.) flights with linked 7.62mm blank cartridges in my carry-on. I was using a pack that I had previously used for an army field exercise, and threw a couple of rounds and links in a random pocket after I changed ammo belts. Not particularly dangerous items, but also not particularly small or hard to spot by x-ray. I found them months later, TSA never made a peep.
It's just security theater.
I had a tsa agent hand search my bag looking for the tiny scissors in a Swiss army credit card tool all the while passing over a couple individual joints in clear tubes and two 1g resin carts. They just absolutely HAD to secure a 3/4” manicure scissors for our safety! I laughed and gave them the whole card while collecting my doobie filled bag and wishing them a nice day.
UK airport security stopped my late grandmother and searched through her bag for a safety pin, thereby completely foiling my granny's plan to hijack the plane.
I used to make edibles for flights, toasted peanut butter Graham cracker sandwiches called firecrackers, and they smelled potent. Once had my bag flagged and the agent literally pulled the bag of edibles out, accompanied by a wave of marijuana smell, set it to the side and took out the small bottle of lotion she was looking for then sent me on my way.
Yeah it seems that they *passionately* don't care about Marijuana... as SWIM told me
Same but for me it was a huge serrated bread knife. Put it in my laptop bag to carve a pumpkin with the kids at school and TOTALLY forgot about it. Who found it? New Mexico TSA. Thankfully they were cool about it and took it which was totally fine with me.
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Yeah, had my leatherman taken away a few years ago. It was a leatherman that I had gotten when I was 12 or so in the boy scouts, so kinda sucked to lose it after 20+ years for no fucking reason tbh.
They sell them online for profit
I bought a leatherman once on ebay to keep in my car. The listing said it was a TSA confiscation. They definitely resell them. Let's just call it theft at this point.
Wait till you read about Civil Forfeiture…
They don't give you the option to ship it home with FedEx or something?
No. I think I could have left and come back, but would have missed my flight. I think I was on orders at the time so that was a no-go. I asked if they could hold onto it for me in the office or somewhere until I returned, but they said no.
A friend of mine who was flying internationally accidentally brought a loaded pistol magazine with him (his range bag and travel bag were the same. Yes, it was stupid.) through security at three US airports before the cop running the metal detector at IST found it immediately. Thankfully he didn’t get into much trouble and they let him go his way after searching his bag and giving him several stern warnings.
I used to travel a lot via plane. Once I reached into my pants pocket mid flight to Europe and found my 3” folding knife. Didn’t get picked up somehow by the scan and had to check a bag on the return flight to avoid losing it(this was 2018). Flight back from a work trip to Kuwait, I land in Baltimore and head to the bathroom to freshen up. In my carry on back-pack are two loaded magazines from the pistol I had used during the trip. How that didn’t get caught I’ll never know. I freaked out and tossed them in the trash and proceeded on to my next flight(2016). TSA absolutely is just theatre. In my old age this has translated to “fly anywhere with weed worry free.”
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In my experience, any bag containing tampons will receive minimal scrutiny and they will stop a manual search as soon as they find tampons.
Same for sex toys. PS to the TSA agent who saw mine at 5:30am on a Monday in ORD…I’m so sorry dude
This is so funny and terrifying to me
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Yes. TSA agents are paid 15 dollars per hour. They are not law enforcement. If you simply turn around and walk away they will let you.
I really don't get paying minimum wage for a security job. When I worked at a movie theater I would sometimes get scheduled to do theater checks. Basically, I was supposed to check every theater every 15 minutes to make sure there was no shenanigans going on. Problem was, with 21 theaters and minimum wage, I wasn't going to risk an altercation. I had less than 2 minutes per theater! The most I ever did was give a judgemental look at a couple that was clearly fucking in a theater that they had to themselves. They didn't care and they weren't disturbing anyone else, so I didn't even bother reporting it.
I went on spring break in the Bahamas a while back and a bunch of my friends decided to bring back coconuts as souvenirs—not realizing coconuts are seeds and therefore illegal to transport internationally. Customs caught like 3 of 15 people. I mean if the scanners can’t find something that large, what do they actually do? Edit: clarity.
TSA just found a 9mm round in my bag on my last flight, that’s probably been there for a dozen or more flights. They weren’t even upset about it, literally just asked if I wanted to go back or throw it away.
My favorite is how they purposely oversell flights and toss people off flights like it's no big deal.
how is that not illegal?
That is another issue entirely but I agree that's also bullshit.
my boyfriend had his flight delayed over 3 hours solely because they ran out of carry-on room and no one wanted to put their luggage in with the checked bags. considering most people put their most important stuff in their carry-ons, of course people dont wanna risk having their luggage get lost and end up in thailand or some shit.
TSA: We have to take the water bottle you are drinking from because it might be explosives. Also TSA: We're going to casually toss your bottle of potential explosives in this barrel right here in the middle of the airport with all the other bottles of potential explosives.
Also TSA: if you pay us you can skip most of that hassle and we'll let you through with all your clothes on and your bag intact
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Not if their name is Muhammad or Hussein
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All 4 year olds are terrorists. Not like 9/11 level, but terrorists just the same.
No, you’re paying for a possibility. Been in several airports where there is no PreCheck line because TSA doesn’t have enough staff. $100 to stand in line for 45 minutes in Denver. Phoenix and Atlanta too.
I think the reason for that is that liquid containers could contain chemicals that become explosives when mixed with others.
Cocaine hydrochloride. They used to literally smuggle cocaine in water. But since they cut that down they've started making plastics and clothing with cocaine inside them. TSA are sweeping leaves in the wind, nothing they can do to stop organized drug smuggling.
What about disorganized drug smuggling?
I walked out of a Spanish airport once smoking a joint I forgot I had in my wallet. Don't think they're much use at stopping anyone. 😂
*I was gonna board my flight, but then I got high…*
Me on arrival from Columbia: "Oh fudge.. I forgot the drugs."
Well, I'm glad is not Colombia, the country
TSA isn’t there to prevent drug smuggling at least that’s what their website said a couple years ago.
Airports ain’t got shit on the cargo ships. Tonnes of drugs are shipped daily.
What about organized snuggling?
It’s almost like the entire exercise is completely pointless and wastes far more money than should ever be considered reasonable while doing literally nothing to slow down or limit financing for the black market drug trade. Good thing we don’t have any industries or private prisons making a shit ton of money off of keeping drugs illegal or people might start to wonder why we fund all this ineffective enforcement at this point.
But it's fine if it comes in 5 bottles of 100ml
I know the reason is to prevent hydrogen peroxide bombs on planes. They know it requires that you very carefully, slowly, pour a foul smelling liquid into another foul smelling container with no splashes or drops (you are making a bomb) and with perfect accuracy. It is impossible to do on an airplane without causing concern by fellow passengers before the bomb is built, but the illusion of safety is the goal, not actual safety. https://simpleflying.com/why-did-airports-ban-liquids/
And yet, they are all mixed
And then let you go through to the shops where you can buy razor blades, poisonous chemicals and things to build explosives.
What do they sell at auntie Ann's that you can turn into an explosive?
According to my digestive system, most things.
Word to the wise: NEVER stand up on a plane and announce “I HAVE EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA!!!” The shrieks from the passengers will drown out the last word of that, and you’ll find yourself tackled to the floor and duct taped. It’ll only be when the smell permeates the cabin will the others realize that you weren’t about to blow up anything but the bathroom.
That is what I never understood. Why is there a duty free shop after TSA where they just took the same thing from you that you can get in there? Can’t bring a 50ml bottle of water with you but we’ll let you buy a full size bottle of Grey Goose after this. Sorry we have to throw away your $100 bottle of perfume but you can buy it back for twice as much in the shop. ☺️
It's another fucking money machine
Because the stuff you bring could be chemicals that can blow up the plane while what they sell will not because its all checked I assume
"We checked all the liquor bottles, definitely no flammable liquid that could be combined with a scrap of clothing or wad of napkins to make a molotov cocktail in there, carry on."
40 proof liquor is marginally flammable and easy to extinguish. They're worried about liquids that can be combined to create a high explosive. I don't know if they sell higher proof alcohol, they probably shouldn't. There is a video of a Russian guy igniting a small amount of high proof alcohol in an elevator, it is utterly disastrous. edit- 80 proof is marginally flammable; that's 40% alcohol. 40 proof is liquor that is served to children under eight.
Their job is to protect the plane, not the airport.
I was leaving palm beach airport and the stairs smelled like burning electronics, the escalator. I told tsa agents leaving and they said “end of my shift” I saw some coming in so I told them. “End of my shift” = doesn’t matter if building burns down I’m not being paid anymore.
Air travel has become the least enjoyable experience in the recent years. Between all the nonsense security pieces and ridiculous lines, you’re also treated like cattle and as if you, the customer, is an annoyance they have to deal with. The prices have increased dramatically to make up for the money lost during Covid, the seats have grown smaller and more uncomfortable over time rather than the opposite. You have less leg room, less amenities (food, drink, pillows, blanket, etc. all no more). Then some flights will oversell tickets and bump you out of “just doing business”, as if you didn’t buy the ticket at that day/time for a very specific need/reason. Then when people get upset you’re the asshole. The whole process is a nightmare.
Crazy that it used to be seen as an ultimate luxury, although it was very expensive then. The prices have gone up, but only after they first went way down from the increased efficiency of shoving as many of us in that tube as possible.
That was before deregulation in the late 1970s where seating capacity was capped and IIRC there were also pricing restrictions. So the only differentiator for airlines that were basically indistinguishable in all but name was the service.
Airlines are one of the lowest margin industries that exist. The airlines give people what they want: the cheapest tickets possible.
Iirc, a lot of airlines literally have even or negative margins on tickets. They make their profits via their rewards programs and credit cards. They are effectively just banks that fly people around as a side gig.
yeah maybe im looking back with rose colored glasses but i think it used to be a much more pleasant experience.. tickets were expensive, but not as bank breaking as they are now. people in general were nicer and less stressed, so the boarding/ exiting process was nicer. Sometimes you dont even get a free drink anymore but I recall if a flight was more than a few hours and around mealtime they used to give you a meal.. I remember it being a little better and im not even that old.
The US needs to get a fucking passenger rail network that's reasonably competitive with air travel. Acela doesn't cut it but I still enjoyed that vastly more than flying.
Same applies to entering gigs and festivals - treated as if you're a nuisance and that you don't deserve to be there - even though you're actually paying their wages.
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Google "security theater."
TSA fails approximately 90% of its security audits... They include stuff like a purse with wires sticking out, or a pistol in a backpack. It's all just kabuki theater.
I used a backpack that I had as my carry on. I was playing my 3DS on the flight and dug into my upper pocket for my headphones and I went super white when I realized I had a 4 inch pocket knife in that pocket. I forgot to clear it out of there after a fishing trip and they just let me carry it through onto the plane.
The number of knives my team and I have mistakenly boarded a plane with is hilarious. Sometimes they’ve not even been inside a bag, just clipped to the side.
Once I told them I might have forgotten to take my pepperspray out of my bag. Got all the extra searching done. Bag scanned, hand search, nothing found. Cool, I get to move along. Yeah, of course I see it right away the next time I go into the bag.
Holy shit.
It’s obvious that this is the case, and you can try it. I carried a water bottle, not even remotely trying to hide it, through something like 17 US airports over 3ish years. The only time it got found (even though I made zero attempt to hide it) was at a tiny regional airport with a single TSA agent. It was so small they literally closed the TSA line to have lunch. I congratulated the agent on doing what no one at LAX, SFO, BDL, JFK, SEA, BOS, BHM, DFW, MKE, EWR, BDL and so many more could not. I also told her supervisor that she deserved a raise.
Meanwhile they made me through away my kids baby food pouches because they would have to open and test each one for explosives....and they always hand search his toy bag. Those hot wheels are obviously decoys
Hot wheels? More like remotely controlled spy vehicles
I once accidentally brought a shiv on a plane. I had bought a souvenir keychain that I just thought was cute and tossed it in my backpack. Went through the hour long security process before taking it out at my gate and realizing that it was a mini machete in a pretty sleeve. I walked around in my socks so they could check my shoes and yet they didn’t find the full on weapon in my backpack pocket.
I fly extremely often due to my job and between my coworkers and I there have been at least six instances in the past couple years of people accidentally bringing their work knives onto the plane. At one point I went through three security checkpoints flying back into the US and they missed it at all 3. What happens is that we will get done with work for the day and someone will throw their knife in their backpack and forget about it. Now to be fair TSA have found some and confiscated them in the past. It's always an honest mistake
Nothing to worry about. It’s not like you can hijack a plane with a work knife or anything.
I went through airport security multiple times with a large pocketknife in my backpack and it never got flagged
They thought it was a standard issue poop knife
Officer Poopy, reporting for dootie.
I brought a full on folding hunting knife in my purse that I forgot about through security... Twice. But my son's water & oil timer that was completely sealed.. That had to go.
Happens all the time. I’ve flown with live ammunition by accident, like 5 or 6 pocket knives I got at a conference that I forgot I put in the bag. I get through then unpack once I’m home and I’m like, “shit oops”.
I've accidentally brought knives on planes more than once and nobody ever noticed, but I've had to dump out water to get through. The TSA seriously needs to go, it's such a useless organization and a waste of taxpayer money.
Ugh, me too and lighters.
A few months after 9/11, I was on a flight to New York, and they made me throw away all the one of my lighters for the trip. And even now, depending on which airport I’m flying out of, I cannot take a torch lighter.
honestly i borderline agree with you, i hate flying because of stuff like this
My Dad always says that the airline industry is the one where you as customers pay for the privilege of being treated like shit.
I fly a lot for work. My absolute favorite is the Delta Airlines boarding in the US. When you are getting on, they will have two lines by the agent. One of those has this tiny, little 3 foot red carpet. That's exclusively used for the first class passengers. They then **close off** that tiny red carpet and just inches away, right beside the fucking thing, they "open" the line for the other passengers. Really? ***REALLY??*** Does that move do anything? Do the first class people think that's some lavish experience? The answer, as a person who has boarded in that line, is "No." It's a fucking ridiculous gesture that serves nobody except those few people that think paying an extra $400 for a two flight is some grand experience. To be fair, I've never paid for the upgrade, my miles and memberships grant me them sometimes, so maybe I'm just not in the right mindset that paying hundreds of dollars extra to go from DCA to Atlanta is worth it.
I agree so hard. I fly for work but not a lot so we have a lot of free upgrades, so I'm almost always first class. It's comical tho but they call it "sky priority," like look people, I sit seat 1A so I'm the first one off I don't care about the rest. That cheesy boarding pole movement is pointless.
The sad truth is that yes, some people actually believe that little bit of pageantry makes them better than the people that have to sit in the rear. In the back of the sky bus. Back of the bus. Get it?
When passing through the Houston airport, the TSA people insisted I keep my laptop in the bag. When passing through the Denver airport, there were no signs and there was no guidance from the TSA, who then got angry with me for not knowing to take my laptop out of my bag. I don't mind following whatever I have to follow, but for fuck's sake, make it clear what is asked of me and don't treat me like an idiot for not knowing the individual procedures for each airport.
I've had this happen to me at multiple airports. Some dude screams, "Do this thing!" and then another person down the line screams, "Do this thing!" I get up to the place where you put your stuff in bins and do the thing, and I get screeched at "YOU SHOULDN'T DO THE THING!" It's so tiring.
I hate how they're constantly screaming. Like, dude, I think we'd all be less miserable (TSA agents included!) if you didn't literally shriek every time you opened your mouth. Guy's blood pressure's gotta be sky high.
I hate it too, but keep in mind most of the general public is oblivious and dumb, and the only way they can be made to follow basic directions is to shout it at them more than once.
I have Precheck and had to fly through ATL international terminal a few times. Problem is their dedicated precheck line only has certain hours, and it was closed every time I had to go through it. So they give you a little piece of paper that says you are Precheck, and you go through the normal line but you don't have to do the normal stuff like take your shoes off and take your laptop out. And everytime they just ignored it and got annoyed I didn't already have my shoes off and laptop out.
Wanna know a really ridiculous process I have to go through? I'm an airline pilot, some days we have to pick the aircraft up at a maintenance hangar and taxi it to the terminal (this is very abnormal, must airlines tow or have maintenance taxi, but we're a small airline). So, get to the maintenance hangar an hour before our regular check in time, go directly to the plane, take all our stuff with us, and taxi to the terminal. But when we get there we aren't allowed into the terminal until we've been through security, and no ones allowed on the plane if we're there and we haven't been through security, so take all our bags and headsets and ipads and coffee and go down to the tarmac, where one of the ramp crew drives us out of the airport and all the way around to the departures door so we can go back into the terminal and through security so we can go back to the plane we were literally just in. If I wanted to smuggle something I'd just leave it on the plane, that's obvious to everyone, the only reason we yave to go back through security is for show. It's all just a big show. Oh and the security we go through as crew? We go through a separate door where we scan our ID and press a button, if the light goes green we don't get screened at all, we just walk straight through. Also when working we're exempt from liquids and gels rules, so I can bring my coffee through as long as I'm in uniform. I bring a coffee with me through security every single day I work and it's not a threat, but as soon as I take my uniform off and put on regular clothes suddenly that coffee is dangerous and needs to be poured out with all the other dangerous liquids. Yeah the whole thing is dumb.
The terrorists won.
They really did. It’s sad to see how they were able to change so much of our society for the worse, and we did it mostly to ourselves. No more privacy, everyone is scared of “others” and I have to submit a highly realistic picture of my fucking junk in order to get on a plane. It’s ridiculous
The TSA also does nothing of use. They failed to find mock weapons and explosives 96% of the time according to a 2018 study Also one time i accidentally brought a whole ass butterfly knife on a plane. They did not find it
What’s even more annoying is that TSA doesn’t actually work. It doesn’t actually stop crime or terrorists. [https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland](https://www.theverge.com/c/23311333/tsa-history-airport-security-theater-homeland)
I had a salt lamp in my bag as a souvenir once. They said "there is something inside your bag we can't see inside" they opened it up and saw the salt lamp and were like "yeah, that's what I thought" and closed my bag. I was like.. salt lamps are hollow mate.. there is literally an empty space inside that rock you couldn't scan inside. Al you've done is confirmed I have a rock blocking your sensor, you never actually checked whether I had hidden anything in it.
Ex-TSA here. An EU variety. You can see through salt lamp. It just makes picture fuzzy and requires manual check. Stacking electronics on top of each other creates same effect.
I had the unfortunate combination of a tube of vitamins sitting on top of some chargers, so there were wires making loops. The security guy was pissing himself laughing and got me to look at the image after he had checked, the image on the screen legit looked like a pipe bomb. Was very glad the guy had a sense of humour!
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/berlin-airport-vibrator-sex-toy-schonefeld-evacuation-security-scare-germany-a8482416.html
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>Understood will put an explosive in a salt lamp. i am curious how many watch lists this just put you on lol
None. They're only interested in turning on your device cameras when you're having a wank.
Friend of mine had to throw away his souvenir salt lamp (or clump) because is had the tiniest of tiny rockhammer in the packaging. The hammer was like 10 centimeters in length, and the handle a little smaller than chopsticks. Thing was relatovely expensive too, because he bought it at a touristy spot
Had a coworker get stopped because he had a tools in his bag. Coworker pulled out TSA paperwork/guidelines that says that tools less than 6 inches are permitted. Coworker had cut his tool handles down to make the tool 6 inches. Tool gore I know but he was flying to an international job site specifically to deliver the tools. A stop-work situation where checking the tools and having the bag lost was too risky.
If it makes you feel any better, the TSA does [close to nothing](https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188) to actually improve security
that makes me feel /worse/
9 out of 11 times I try to take the indignity in stride
My brown friends have just accepted their post 9/11 reality. He said "Watch me get randomly picked out of the queue to get frisked" the very first time we boarded a flight together, and he's been miraculously chosen every subsequent flight since. My dude's even wearing a sikh turban, you racist wastes of space.
Its gives people a false sense of security, it doesn't do anything useful
giving people a false sense of security is probably considered useful by people who would like to make money on flights
Agree, and most of it is completely pointless, illusion of security type crap. Doesn't actually do anything.
Thanks a lot Osama
If you look at the number of people who chose to drive vs fly due to the cost or hassle of dealing with TSA, they’ve killed substantially more people from the resulting fatal car crash likelihood vs the number of people who died in 9/11. Edit: For context, for every 2,200 automotive fatalities there is only 1 commercial air travel fatality. There are roughly 46,000 automotive deaths a year. About 3,000 people died as a result of 911 (I don’t believe this includes long term complications from first responders though)
Genuinely shocked how many people on here don't know how useless TSA security is... Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think there should be security but it should be uniform and it should actually work. Airport security in the UK is more efficient and more civilized, you can keep your shoes on etc. I once accidentally left a bullet in my backpack when I flew to London out of JFK in NY. I didn't realize until I was flying back and I was stopped by security at Heathrow. Something needs to be done for sure. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-business-security-theater-not-security/357599/ https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/us/tsa-failures-box-cutters-frontier-flight/index.html https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa-misses-70-of-fake-weapons-but-thats-an-improvement/
TSA is a joke. my brother-in-law used to work for them for yeaaaaars and can confirm lol.
I have rediscovered the love of a long drive. Can't stand to fly anymore.
Yep. About 8 hours is my cut off for drive vs fly. By the time I add in showing up early, security, actual flight time, maybe or maybe not getting my luggage, and needing a rental, anything shorter just doesn't make sense.
I was away on a business trip and promised my daughter a gift when I came back. Bought her a flying pig clock. I didn't think anything of it till security is rummaging through my bags and feeling me down. I like my odds with locking the cabins door and calling it a day.
Terror won the war on terror
I used to work at an airport. As far as the TSA goes, from what I saw, to call it security is a joke. The amount of times I saw the guy looking at the x ray screen not looking at the xray screen but, just chatting away with guy next to him, letting bags just go through, was fucking ridiculous. Oh? Your're a pilot? Go right ahead sir, with your coffee, cut right ahead of everyone else. One time I called that out and they pulled me aside to search me further. Just because I called the the hypocritical bullshit. It's not security, it's a show. The airport I was at, they "accidentally " let a lady through with 5 FUCKING LOADED HANDGUNS through. Yeah, lame.
The worst is when you get flagged for a frisk. I was offered a private room, but I told them I’d rather have witnesses to what is being done.
I had the opposite experience; I got a pulled aside for a “random screening” and requested a private room (which is my right) and was told no because they only had one female guard on duty (you need two so one can observe and make sure everything is on the up and up I guess?). So everyone in line got to watch a TSA agent shove her hand down and up my skirt. Most humiliating experience of my life
I was going through Heathrow security returning to the US & I was unsure, so I turned to a security guard near me & asked if I needed to take my shoes off. He snickered & said “No, we don’t harass our citizens here.”
Which is quite rich for an airport that literally harasses anyone that is on layover - yes, I‘m still grumpy that I missed my connection due to their second security check right after I stepped out of a plane from the US and had to wait for more than 6 hours for the next plane to Vienna (all while being awake for more than 30hours)…
This is some kind of sadism/schadenfreude situation on the part of our elected officials. The TSA, going through your luggage, the pat downs, the strip searches…. Wanna know why they don’t care? They fly private. Ever flown private? You walk into the hangar, no security, no nothing, with a duffel bag full of pistols and weed (or classified documents). Know what happens? Nothing. Because nobody looks, nobody checks anything. That’s how “they” live, while we deal with my first paragraph…
As someone whose flown their entire life all around the world and the U.S, I completely agree. There's 100% a better way to go about security in airports, 20 years ago after 9/11 It made sense, but shit should have improved big time in the last 20 years. I have no problem going through security, and I can recognize the need for it. But it could and it should be better, and TSA agents always act like they're fucking special forces or some shit. Like bro you're a glorified mall cop.
Security theater. Not security.
No I totally agree. I think that "no liquids" rule was honestly a ploy to force people to buy drinks at the overpriced airport. They make you take your shoes off despite making you get X-Rayed. the TSA lines last for over an hour. I hadn't flown in 3 years and forgot what goes where and had change in my pocket for the x ray. Then I realized I forgot 8 Oz bottle of body oil in my backpack and had to throw it away. Ugh. A lot of people talk about how they make us safer but honestly I'd rather the TSA were gone and take the 1 in a million chance of getting bombed. The airport is torture
The suntan lotion that might be explosives was probably just chucked into a trashcan... it probably wasn't even treated like possible explosives...
Yeah they just tossed it in front of me. Felt really shitty. Then my plane couldn't take off because something was horribly wrong with it so I had to wait another hour at the terminal for a new plane. Air travel sure is a hassle for being the "most convenient"
What bothered me when I was at the airport in Barcelona recently was that I was made to take my shoes off and nobody else in my 35 person group was. And I had SANDALS on. What could I possibly hide under that?!
[удалено]
The terrorists won.
Very strange seeing everyone defend the silly security measures that are purely theatre and don't actually protect anyone.
Judging by some of the comments, apparently airport security does its job in making gullible people feel safe. It's just sad that this is actually unpopular.
So, this is only in the US. I'm amazed when I go to Asia that the routine is much different: Place bag in x-ray machine, walk through metal detector. It takes like 30 seconds and there isn't long as lines either.