We've been traveling with one-quart bags and leaving our scissors at home since we got word items like these were banned from air travel.
And until today, we thought everyone else was, too.
But according to chatters on Flyertalk, some passengers see government regulations as mere recommendations.
The scary part? Items like screwdrivers, knives and giant bottles of hair gel are going undetected in airport security lines. How do we know? Just listen to this:
As my bags went down the belt, I remembered I had my full-sized toiletries in the roll-aboard so I told the TSA guy that it would probably get pulled because of it. I get to the other side and everything came thru without anyone saying anything, so off I went. But wait -- that's not the end of the story. When I opened my bag at the hotel in DC, not only did I pull out all my full-sized toiletries, but I also had a box cutter in the bag.
And in a case of great irony, one traveler had this experience to share:
A couple of weeks ago flying out of TPA, the screener takes my carryon off the belt to check it. Misses 3 Bic lighters, a pocket knife, a laser pointer that looks like a .30-06 shell and CONFISCATES MY DING DONG DEODORANT.
If this doesn't make you feel safer, we're not sure what will.
With the suffocating appearance of books, websites and TV shows listing places to travel "before you die" (they make us feel kind of pressured and inadequate, no matter how well-traveled we are), it's nice to read a list that tells us to chill out at home for a bit.
The Sydney Morning Herald travel blog recently posted the things not to try before you die list, which somehow seems much more interesting. Not that we're guaranteeing we'll follow the advice, but drinking Ugandan tap water and using a squat toilet on a train are travel activities we already were a bit suspicious about.
Further anti-advice includes not going to a glass-blowing demonstration in Venice, not flying into Heathrow or Gatwick airports and not taking a Greyhound bus across the U.S. It says not to fly on any U.S.-based airlines either, which kind of limits a lot of travel possibilities. At least we don't feel the pressure of crossing things off a "before you die" list.
Airplanes are magical things. You know the old problem: You depart late, but the pilot puts the foot down and you end up arriving on time, and everybody wants to know why they don't fly faster all the time. There's more than fuel economy issues slowing down our planes — traffic, just like on our roadways, backs things up in the air.
The big news is that flights from Europe to Asia are about to get faster, thanks to a bunch of clever Thai guys who've figured out a better air traffic flow management system that they've dubbed Bobcat. For some reason, however, the only thing the Aerothai gang's theory can do better is manage the congestion over Afghanistan between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. This will mean you could reach Paris from Bangkok a whole hour earlier. Seems like magic, and we wanna know why they can't do this everywhere.
We love a good survey here at Jaunted. And what better topic to question random Australians about than their sexual behavior on (and on the way to) holidays. The obvious topic, the Mile High club, gave some disappointing results: Just 7% of men have done it in those tiny bathrooms, and just 1% of women. Do the math yourself there. Fantasizing about joining the Mile Highers rates higher, with almost half of the men surveyed and a quarter of the women admitting to this idea crossing their minds.
Flirting with flight attendants was another important area for the survey. Here, 43% of men admitted to this and 14% of women--significantly, perhaps, no Tasmanian women do this. And finally, half of the people surveyed admitted to having a "holiday fling": Surely this makes Aussies a fine target for a good time when they're on the road--but we knew that already.
The question on the Fodor's Forum was simple: HOW TO COPE ON THAT LONG LONG TRANSPACIFIC FLIGHT TO CHINA. And the answers that Frank the poster wanted were about "ways to while away the time," like audiobooks. But judging from the responses, it's pharmaceuticals and not that book about killer cell phones that will get you to the other side of the world. Dolls, do your work.
The best response along these lines from from UKUKUK, who says that his long-flight method is to take "30-40mg of Valium [at least three times the usual dosage] and drink a few of those small bottles of red wine with my meal, then I wash it down with a couple of JD and cokes. This is guaranteed to ensure you sleep well and no one wakes you up climbing over to get to the toilet or if their kids start misbehaving."
We hope he was kidding, but if not, we salute his impressive, and probably lethal, pill-popping prowess.
We'd always played with the idea of taking one of those Trumpian helicopter tours around Manhattan, but now that Bryan Curtis of Slate has done it, we think we can hold out a whole lot longer. For the record, he did have a good time.
According to Britain's chief medical officer, your chances of dying in the hospital of a developed country because of medical error are more than 30,000 times "better" than that of dying in an air accident. (The risks are 1 in 300 and 1 in 10 million, respectively.) Leaving aside the question of whether the two populations are at all comparable, go ahead and use up those frequent-flier miles before scheduling an operation . . . .
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by jnaw
The question on the Fodor's Forum was simple: 
We'd always played with the idea of taking one of those Trumpian helicopter tours around Manhattan, but now that Bryan Curtis of Slate has done it, we think we can hold out a whole lot longer. For the record, he did have a good time.
