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Should You Pack A Gun To Make Sure the TSA Takes Care Of Your Baggage?
The Internet works in strange and wonderful ways. In 2006, Bill Schneier posted a travel hack on his security blog, musing that photographers who check expensive camera lenses can put empty guns or starter pistols in their luggage to secure their equipment. Since TSA classifies them as firearms they trigger a bevy of special screenings and tracking. The trick was picked up last January by productivity uber-blog Lifehacker, and from there spread across the blogosphere and even into legacy media. Over the weekend it landed in our Twitter inbox with a "verify this" request, and here we are.
Does this work? Absolutely. When you check luggage at the counter you're asked to declare if you have a firearm. If you indicate that you do, a TSA agent is called over to flag your baggage, hand-screen it, and confirm that the firearm is packed correctly. That means, minimally: unloaded, kept in a separate hard case, and secured by an unbreakable lock. The upshot is two-fold. Flagged luggage is extra-tracked to the point where Schneier says the risk of loss is "virtually zero." In the meantime, since your bags have already been screened, you're entitled to lock them and TSA has to contact you before breaking the locks.
So can you do this? Sure. Should you do it? Highly questionable...
Tags: Travel Gear / Luggage / Baggage / V Australia / Fashion Travel / → All Tags
V Australia's 'Perfect Bag' Debuts, Is Predictably Big and Expensive
A frequent traveler pays particular attention to a few certain things, and doesn't mind paying extra for them. Some examples are frequent flyer status (and club access), a good dinner of the local cuisine, and ideal luggage.
With their "Perfect Bag" project, airline V Australia targeted the latter, and sent New York designer Steven Alan on a lengthy tour of Australia, with the idea that he would return and design the perfect piece of luggage for the V Australia flyers—or indeed anyone. But the resulting product—seen on Steven himself, above—is kind of anticlimactic and for $795, we at least expected some wheels.
Tags: Travel Gear / V Australia / Virgin / Luggage / Baggage / Fashion Travel / → All Tags
V Australia Reveals What They Believe To Be The Perfect Travel Bag
Is this the perfect bag for airline travel? V Australia and New York fashion designer Steven Alan think so, especially after they sent him all around Australia on a trip for inspiration to create this accessory specifically for them.
During his trip Down Under, Alan blogged and tweeted about the experience, all the while asking the public for hints on what they travel with and what type of bag they'd like. Finally, he returned and went to work on the prototype with his team, and they emerged with the above bag. Do you like it? We're a bit mixed, since it's kind of big and we prefer a thinner profile for easy overhead bin stuffing, but then we haven't seen it in person.
Tags: Bad Ideas / Luggage / Carry-On Luggage / Travel Gear / → All Tags
GasCase Luggage Is a Hip Traveler's Worst Security Nightmare
Via If Its Hip Its Here, we discover German company Ivorilla's new line of metal gas can luggage. The GasCases come in two designs with the "diesel" version opening from the side and the "fuel" version opening from the top. The product page, when run through the magic of Google Translate, seems to indicate that the luggage line is targeted toward hipper-than-thou DJs, who can use them to pack around 50 vinyls.
Very clever. We'd even go so far as to say "neat." And for a certain niche customer who knows never to wheel these things into an airport, a nice little personal statement. But we're afraid that there are a few hipsters out there who might be tempted to take their free-stylin' ways into a civilian aviation center, and that's when things will inevitably go awry. Try to stand in line in an airport with a GasCase, and we anticipate things will go one of two ways...
Tags: Luggage / Stolen Luggage / Travel Tips / Baggage Claim / Travel Crime / → All Tags
How To Protect Your Stuff at The Baggage Claim
Tween stickers may protect your luggage at the baggage claim but we suggest reading our tips below too.
While living amongst "towers and towers" of stolen luggage taken from the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport must have been (insert sarcasm font) without a doubt a truly glamorous life (end sarcasm font), luggage thieves Keith and Stacy King will now have to answer to 45 different counts theft, burglary and trafficking in stolen property.
The good news is that Sky Harbor has begun doing random luggage checks as well as increase video surveillance and patrols in the baggage claim area. Still, here are some quick common sense tips to help you protect your luggage from airport thieves. You may think this is a bit of overkill but then again, you probably paid at least $15 to check your bag, so why not see that it gets to you safely?
1. Try not to check a bag. Tim Gunn would say, "Make it work." We say, "Make it work in an approved carry-on bag."
2. Go directly to the baggage claim. Don't dillydally after getting off the plane, no matter how badly you want a taste of Pinkberry. Go downstairs and wait for your bag to arrive.
3. Sew a piece of identification inside your bag. Thieves will rip the ID tags off the handle of your suitcase right away but if you can somehow mark the inside of your bag as your property, then you will have an easier time identifying it if it does get stolen.
Tags: Holiday Travel / Luggage / Carry-On Luggage / → All Tags
Is CNN Right To Blame Carry-Ons For Frustrating Holiday Travel?
We've talked about this before in a much broader context, but there really is something about packing the overhead bins that turns people into animals. It's not stress; no one was pushing in line on the skyway to the plane. It's not rational anger; people should be calmer the closer they are to settling in for the flight. And it makes no interpersonal sense as people rarely fight that viciously over armrests or seat pitches, both of which are at least as important on a long flight. There's just something about putting "my stuff" in "my space" that drives people absolutely insane.
Now CNN has taken that basic psychological fact and somehow spun an entire article out of it. The basic idea: business travelers live by a set of unwritten guidelines that holiday travelers—the clumsy aviation bumpkins of our story—comically stumble into. Or not so comically, since Jim Kavanagh of CNN seems to believe that this tension is a match at the fuse of all holiday travel. He's obviously on the right track since there really is something weird about the way people stow luggage. But in another way he's very definitely wrong. First let's look at his little sociological writeup:
Tags: V Australia / Virgin / Travel Gear / Luggage / Baggage / Fashion Travel / → All Tags
The Search For Ideal Luggage Continues: V Australia's 'Perfect Bag'
It's one of the oldest moneymaking games in the book: convince tourists that the bags they're traveling with aren't safe enough, or convenient enough, or stylish enough, and sell them a more jaunt-friendly bag. Very very soon however, all this could be put to rest by the release of the fruit of the labors of a fashion designer-airline combination.
Whether you're of the type that prefers the sixteen zippered pockets and multitude of snaps, or the type that wants only a simplistic tote, V Australia is asking you to help them design "the perfect bag for the perfect trip."
Tags: Travel Gear / Luggage / Suitcases / Booze Travel / Drinking Travel / → All Tags
The Most Finely Tuned Way To Travel With Champagne
Another in our increasingly long list of exorbitantly priced designer luggage, the new "In Case of..." collection from Mumm GH has the additional benefit of not being able to carry much except champagne bottles and flutes. Conveniently, each of the three trunks actually come with Brut Cordon Rouge and Vintage 1998 and the flutes with which to drink it.
Inconveniently, the cheapest of the three pieces costs over $5,000. That price gets you one of the leather trunks, the red Mini Mumm Cordon Rouge Gross, and comes with four mini bottles of the sparkly. Things get even steeper after that, although in fairness the bottles do get bigger. So while we will never ever speak poorly of booze travel - still.
Tags: Travel Gear / Luggage / Suitcases / Globe Trotter / Japan Travel / → All Tags
Andy Warhol Grins In His Grave Over $2,500 Luggage Bearing His Name
Between this Globe Trotter Warhol-branded luggage set and the Flight 001 chichi rent-a-luggage we covered a few months ago, we're starting to think that manufacturers are just trying to bait us. Are people really dropping thousands of dollars for something they check through at the front of the airport, only to pick up hours later when they're bleary eyed and jet lagged? Here's the deal on these pricey, limited-edition bags:
In association with the week-long Andy Warhol x Hysteric Glamour pop-up shop at the ISETAN store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku precinct, a marquee item... with three different sizes, each feature an all-black exterior while the inside features a Warholian skull motif with signature. The Andy Warhol x Hysteric Glamour pop-up shop on the 4th floor of ISETAN runs from the 16th till the 23rd of September.
True story: we have a writer at Jaunted HQ whose very first non-airport experience in Japan was at the world's busiest train station in Shinjuku. During rush hour. Dragging all his international luggage. Because our writer is not very smart. That's a whole other story howeve, and this post is about Warholian skulls on the inside of overpriced luggage sets. Just how overpriced, you ask?
Tags: Airline Hell / United / YouTube / Luggage / Travel Gripes / United Breaks Guitars / → All Tags
Put Your Hands Together For 'United Breaks Guitars' Part Two
The saga of the PR nightmare for United Airlines continues with the second installment of the 3-part music video series from a United passenger who had his guitar smashed by baggage handlers.
The music group, Sons of Maxwell, were headed on a week-long tour when they flew United through Chicago, and glimpsed their checked guitar cases being roughly handled on the tarmac. Sure enough, the lead singer's guitar was broken and required $1,200 in repairs. United refused to pony up any dough in retribution, and so Sons of Maxwell vowed revenge in the form of musical shame.
Tags: Lost Luggage / Baggage Fees / Airline News / Airline Hell / Luggage / → All Tags
1.8 Million Bags Were Lost In 2008; Where Did They All Go?
Do you swear that the airlines have it out for you and so manage to lose your bags 9 times out of ten? Well, you aren't all that special since lost baggage is still very much an epidemic, and Andrew Price, the head of the International Air Transport Association's Baggage Improvement Program, can attest to this. He not only has his own bags lost or delayed much of the time, but it's actually his job to see that this doesn't happen.
Poor Mr. Price; he just admitted this embarrassing fact to the Wall Street Journal and they've used it as a jumping-off point to take a deeper look at the barely-turning cogs behind international airline luggage movement:
Tags: Luggage / Travel Gadgets / Jaunted Tested / → All Tags
Wide Load: Briggs & Riley Baseline Holds A Lot But At a Hefty Price
We didn't head home alone this 4th of July weekend; Briggs & Riley Travelware sent us a sample of their new 20" Carry-On Expandable Wide-Body Upright from the Baseline collection "for serious travelers," which we promptly abused for 1,800 miles. How did it come out? Not bad!
First impression: Straight out of the box we recognized it was slightly larger than our usual carry-on (a Delsey roller with laptop pocket) but smaller than the Samsonite we use for weeklong trips. In the check-in line, it looked about average height compared to other rolling carry-ons, but as promised, slightly wider.
