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November 02, 2006

Those all-important quart-sized bags

I swear, you can't make this stuff up. The Wall Street Journal's airline travel reporter Scott McCartney reports ($) (see McCartney's follow-up article here) about the Transportation Security Administration's latest campaign to make airline travel a complete and utter aggravation:

An airport security screener sat at a Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport checkpoint beside a plastic tub filled with small cans of shaving cream and tiny tubes of toothpaste.

Were they contraband items that ran afoul of safety rules?

"No, people didn't have quart-size plastic bags," the Transportation Security Administration official said.

Where's Seinfeld when you need him? In a quintessential bureaucratic bedevilment, the TSA allows small bottles and tubes of liquids to be carried aboard airplanes only if they are enclosed in a quart-size, zip-top plastic bag. No gallon bags. No fold-over sandwich bags. Even if you have only one bottle on you, it must be carried in a quart-size, zip-top plastic bag. Screeners confiscate any nonconforming items or send travelers to ticket counters to check luggage.

That's just one of the frustrations travelers have found as TSA began implementing new rules on liquids last month and, in the eyes of some travelers, seemingly prohibited common sense. [. . .]

Either frustrated or confused by the new rules, or unable to squeeze all they need into a quart-size bag, passengers continue to check baggage at elevated rates, airlines say. And TSA is encouraging that for passengers who don't want to mess with quart zip-top bags.

All of this to reassure us that airline travel is safe from terrorists?

Posted by Tom at November 2, 2006 04:23 AM

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