The TSA has ruled that lighters will once again be legal to take onto airplanes, effective August 4. Not Zippo lighters or other “torch” lighters, just “common” lighters.
Amazing. Bottled water is still illegal, but a container containing a flammable liquid is permissible. That’s freedom, baby.
And why the two week delay? Do lighters’ magical terrorist powers somehow expire at midnight on August 3?
Sounds like a big step forward in the expansion plans of all-smoking airline Smintair!
Speaking of Smintair, the tobbaco-laden German/British airline with the absurd claim that its air will be healthier than nonsmoking airlines’, looks like it’s actually making headway. They recently put up a timetable (pdf) that has them flying Dusseldorf to Tokyo and on to Shanghai starting October 28. The countdown is on.
The Smintair website remains one of my favorites, for sheer comedy. Everything from the poorly translated English, to the 1970s porn-esque styling, to nuggets like this line from the employment page: “Allergics to any kind of smoke or aviation specific conditions, militant Anti-Smokers, or people with other social deficiencies are kindly asked to not apply.”
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July 23rd, 2007 at 11:39 am
I assume the delay is so that TSA can train their employees and partners and have a smoother ‘transition’ though this means that they’ll be free to confiscate them during those two weeks.
As always, plain silly…
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!To recap, via Upgrade: Travel Better: The TSA has ruled that lighters will once again be legal to take onto airplanes, effective August [...]
July 24th, 2007 at 9:26 am
The delay is so they can inform all the security officers not to have you arrested for bringing a lighter.
The logic, on the other hand, is completely asinine. I mean, how hard would it be to replace the lighter fluid with some other more combustible fluid. This does not make sense.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Here’s a funny article relating to TSA and liquids.
http://www.zug.com/gab/index.cgi?func=view_thread&head=1&thread_id=74827
He brings up a good point: if these liquids are so dangerous, why do they casually dispose of them mixed together in a plain trash can?
July 26th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Excellent! I like how he reclaimed his salad dressing from the barrel of non-dangerous liquids.
Great example of security theater.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Haha. sometimes these regulations really make no sense. I never figure out how they decide the date that things are no longer dangerous.
So just to keep track, lighters good, water bad.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
[...] is it that the TSA can impose new restrictions with no advance warning, and yet it takes several weeks for long-standing restrictions on lighters to be rescinded? The argument that it takes a while for [...]