Jaunted

Luggage / Baggage / TSA / Lost Luggage / Travel Hacks / → All Tags

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...

more ›

Thanksgiving / Airports / Travel Hacks / WiFi / Rule 240 / → All Tags

Jaunted's Airport Cheat Sheet

Traveling on Thanksgiving is like competing in the Olympics--if the games were populated by knuckleheads who hadn't taken a flight since we started taking our shoes off for the TSA. If you're reading Jaunted, you're already ahead of the pack, but maintain your lead through hurdles like involuntary schedule changes and forgetfulness with our super-guide to the airport.

more ›

Travel Hacks / → All Tags

The Watchmen

Ideo, Inc is a company that specializes in the realm of travel design. Companies, like Marriott, pay them to study travelers in their native habitat--hotels--to determine what's working and what's outdated in their hotels. The results?

No one likes seeing a human at check-in--they'd rather have a self-service kiosk, like at the airport. And people rarely unpack everything into large armoires, choosing instead to leave everything in their suitcase.

Naturally, they also found that business travelers who like to have a glass of wine (or three) while they work don't have enough desk space. Their solution is two-tiered desk, with the wine on the lower tier, to limit the damage from spills. Cutting back on the drinking? Heaven forefend.

[Image via Aaron23/Flickr]

Travel Hacks / Passport Info / → All Tags

Passport Photos Go Digital

Looks like the days of heading into those creepy corner stores that say "Passport Photos Take Here" are finally over courtesy of ePassportPhoto.

You can print using one of ePassportPhoto's partners like Shutterfly or Snapfish and have the passport photos sent to you.

The best part is because the photo is digitally based you won't end up with a photo that you yourself don't approve of.

Maybe if we had found this site back in September we wouldn't be getting pulled out of airport security lines for extra screening--yeah, our current photo is kinda scary.