What have airport security removed from your luggage?

Two days later we were flying back from San Francisco. For some reason, all the brits were being corralled for extra security checks by homeland securty who were a) very rude / assertive and b) armed. 

Flying back to the UK from Denver (probably only a couple of years after 9/11), I got taken to one side for some “extra” security searching. Shoes off, proper pat down although thankfully it stopped short of the “step into this room and take your clothes off” stage.

Anyway, out of interest I asked why I’d been selected and the very assertive and very armed Homeland Security person said something along the lines of any more talking would be followed by the little room and undressing.

I suddenly lost interest in why I’d been “randomly selected” for more searches.

Almost had my All Blacks rugby shirt confiscated in the Capitol building in Washington DC.

I went through security as I entered the building and could see one of the Police watching me from a distance, as I exited the metal detector he stepped sideways and stopped right in front of my face. I paused and had no idea what was going on, he looked down at the name on my shirt and said “All blacks….what’s that supposed to signify” I said nothing its a rugby team. He immediately said there’s a rugby team in the UK called the All Blacks, I said no there’s a rugby team in New Zealand called the All Blacks. I suddenly twigged this guy wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box (God knows how they trusted him with a gun, packet of crayons would have been challenging) and stepped around him to carry on entering the building.

That was the end of it and no one else mentioned my All Blacks shirt thankfully!

Two stick out.

An alfine hub and psp charger crammed into the hub box had Manchester airport security very interested and it took a while for them to understand what the alfine hub was.

My worst exploit was going through Gatwick. At the time my company was avoiding UK patent laws by developing generic medicines in Portugal. I used to carry hplc columns (at the time very delicate separating devices), via my hand luggage as we didn’t trust the hold. They were 250cm long, hollow steel rods with bolts in and at each end, about 1cm thick. If you look inside they are filled with a fine white powder.

Had gone done this several times without a bother but this time I was pulled by an enthusiastic lad. With me was an absolute clown, who was my supervisor at the time. Ace at solid dose formulation, shocking at the real world.

When asked what the “rods” were for, my supervisor interjected “those are for testing the drugs!”. Security guards face lights up and off to a little room we go. Fortunately the security supervisor has seen hplc columns before and waves us off out without a bother.

Which meant the two bags of white powder (tablet excipients) in my bags pockets were not inspected. Now, I had a company headed letter for the excipients, explaining what they were but it was signed by our head of quality at the time. Dr David Cockanye.

After that I refused to be a transport mule for stuff relating to work.

Fondue set . Apparently it is possible to hijack a plane with a fondue stick .

Nothing.

I’ve made an ethical decision not to fly unlike you selfish arseholes and spend most of my time on various social media platforms to make sure everyone knows about it.

@CCP, you may need to cross a frontier one day though.

BTW. Are you in Chester? I know that the Wales: England border is very porous indeed but hey ho, what if this changed?

I suspect that it is not going to happen soon unless we are forced to lock down again.

I had security in San Diego search my bag. I assumed it was because of a number of relays. But it was because a small bottle opener. Apparently it looked like a knife from the angle on the scanner. Ultimately, they let me keep it.

Years ago I had my rucsac pulled at Stansted. Apparently they thought that the tiny gas stove could ignite in the hold mid-flight. I told them that as there was no gas cylinder there was no fuel for the stove and no source of ignition made it harder to start a fire. They argued and argued and  a senior manager eventually let me keep it and threw the rucsac on the conveyor

Pedal spanner for me – Edinburgh airport on the red eye to London. I was back later that day so asked them to hold it until end of the day – if I wasn’t back it could get binned. They were kind enough to keep a hold of it and I picked it back up on my return.

I’ve had to post my keychain penknife (3cm blade) home a couple of times, but what I remember most is what was deemed acceptable in my hand luggage travelling back to London from Paris in the early Nineties – two 12” chefs’s knives (one carving, one cleaver).

I should have removed this

https://amzn.eu/d/0f3SPfkh

prior to flying. Very handy in emergencies.

But, understandably, potentially alarming to cabin crew.

” Why, what was inside it? An action-man sized gun?”

Nah, just a tightly folded £20 note.

So, it was confiscated at security, but they let me keep the cash.

Flying out of Manchester last week, my hand luggage got pinged off to one side.

The foil container of energy drink powder was to blame. Security guy asked me what the “large metallic mass” could be so I described the package to him and he rummaged around, pulled it out, saw it was exactly as described and said that he used High5 Citrus flavour.

Handy when you get a security guard with a bit of real life experience and knowledge. There was enough other cycling gear in the hand luggage to easily flag it as “this belongs to a cyclist, it’s entirely reasonable to have energy drink in there too”.

In spite of the little search, it was still one of the easiest and quickest trips through Manchester security that I’ve ever had.

Fondue set . Apparently it is possible to hijack a plane with a fondue stick .

Aside from rules and regs… I’m interested to know why anyone would want to put a fondue set in thier carry-on… mid flight choccy marshmellows and/or melted cheese?

I’d say it’s in case the plane crashes on a remote mountainside and as sole survivor you are forced to eat the corpses… fondue would make it almost fun.

I had a D Lock confiscated at Malaga Airport, despite the fact that It had gone through security Ok at Stanstead on the way out – It was years ago and I still have the key for it on my keyring.

My father in law was travelling to Alicante one year and went through security only to find himself escorted into a private room for a serious chat with the authorities. He had forgotten that he had been shooting the week before and had six shotgun cartridges in his jacket pocket! His wife was not impressed.

A number of years ago at Istanbul Airport. On arrival at the departure hall your bags go through the X-Ray scanner when you enter the airport. I then went with a colleague and joined the queue to the check in and drop off our cases. As we got to the check in desk a security guard approached us and told us to bring our bags and to follow him. Off we went into the depths of the airport and taken to a small room. My suitcase was placed on the table and the security guy put on a pair of gloves at which point I started sweating… Anyway I opened the suitcase and the guy rummages around the case and ignoring the bag of tools that I have in the case he opens my toiletries bag and has a look inside, takes out the bottle of Davidoff Cool Water that is in there, smells the spray and decides he likes it. He then proceeds to spray himself a number of times with the bottle, hands it back to me and then tells us we can go.

My colleague and I looked at each other shrugged our shoulders, breathed a sigh of relief and disappeared back to the check in desk as quickly as possible.

Two years later, almost the same scenerio with a different colleague but this time he didn’t check my toiletries bag.

Not been back to Istanbul for a third time…

my favourite 4mm ball end allen key got confiscated at Bali airport

i did find my forgotten penknife while i was on the plane

My lad was about 5 years old and we let him pack his own essential’s in his backpack. Obviously for an 5 year old boy this included a (fake) 20mm Spitfire cannon shell that I’d bought him at East Fortune air show. Security were super chill about out as they could see he was upset at losing his favourite bullet!

opposite of the thread title but my dad flew up to help me do DIY on my first flat. In hand luggage he bought an electronic timer for the hot water tank, boxes of nails and screws and quite a comprehensive tool kit. He even said to security that he thought they might want to take a look but they were totally cool. That was Luton Edinburgh flight on 10 Sept 2001. Things changed for his return flight.

Airport security weren’t too chuffed with a snow saw in my snowboard bag one year. Just like this

https://www.skibartlett.com/touring-telemark-c7/touring-c26/skins-crampons-c102/ortovox-snow-saw-silver-p15901

They let me through with it once I explained what it was for.

I was with a colleague in JFK waiting for a US internal flight to demonstrate our latest ‘Bill Of Materials’ software update when the development team rang. Apparently they found an error in one of the metadata files that needed to be set to a different value. They asked if we could change the value before we got to the client demo.

My colleague said “Don’t worry, the BOM is on my laptop and I will set it when on the plane”

I heard something behind me and there were a bunch of men with big guns pointing them at us.

We didn’t make the flight or demo.

Airport security weren’t too chuffed with a snow saw in my snowboard bag one year.

getting onto the Sky site in London (not an airport but they had similar scanners) I forgot I had a plasterboard saw in my bag. Something I would need for work often, but not on that particular job.

Its so thin and floppy you wouldn’t be able to stab anyone wearing a thick jumper with it; but side on it looks like an 8 inch zombie knife.

Rhinelander > Chicago > Manchester

A brand new copy of Stephen King’s Needful Things (I’m a poet…)

I once flew Manchester > Paris with a pistol barrel in my briefcase (inadvertently)

Wasn’t even challenged!

Flying back to the UK from Denver (probably only a couple of years after 9/11), I got taken to one side for some “extra” security searching. Shoes off, proper pat down although thankfully it stopped short of the “step into this room and take your clothes off” stage.

Anyway, out of interest I asked why I’d been selected and the very assertive and very armed Homeland Security person said something along the lines of any more talking would be followed by the little room and undressing.

I suddenly lost interest in why I’d been “randomly selected” for more searches.

I had a similar experience flying back from JFK several years before 9/11. I think the homeland security have always been that welcoming

I used to travel a lot on business, my then job as a sales engineer required me to present proposed designs to the customer (pre-pandemic). I used a space mouse navigate around the model that I was presenting. I always got pulled aside to explain what it was.

My colleague said “Don’t worry, the BOM is on my laptop and I will set it when on the plane”

I heard something behind me and there were a bunch of men with big guns pointing them at us.

Years ago I had one of those TeePee softcase bike bags. There was nothing on it to mark it out as containing a bike and it was an absolute guarantee that at every check in there’d be someone (often 2 or 3 people) in the queue who’d ask what was in there. Had all sorts of guesses – surfboard, piano (WTF?!), bike, harp… Anyway, standing in the queue at Stansted and one guy – you know those people who talk quite loudly and obviously consider themselves wildly funny? – said (jokingly) “is it a bomb?”

The armed police standing to one side of the queue took a sudden interest in the goings-on and took the guy out of the queue to have a little chat with him about not using the B word when standing in airport queues. I saw him again standing rather sheepishly right at the very back of the queue once he’d had his talking to from the nice men with big guns.

Tosser.

When I was in my teens I was regularly flying to the far east, on one occasion, flying from Heathrow I’d passed security and was getting settled in my seat on the 747 waiting for the doors to close when 2 armed police boarded the plane.  They checked off the seat number against the manifest until they got to me, at that point it was the “are you Mr xxx? Would you mind accompanying us?”

So, I get escorted off the plane in front of all the other passengers, straight down the steps and onto the tarmac.  At which point they asked, “can you identify you luggage?”

“Yes, it’s that small case over there surrounded by security.”

“What’s in the case?”

“Clothes, books, toiletries, oh and 6 months supply of contact lens solution in little plastic bottles that I’m taking out for my Dad.”

At that point there was visible relief from all the armed officers, “that explains it! Of you go back to your seat”.

The look on the faces of the other passengers as I got back on the plane was priceless!

Given some of the stories in this thread, it may be of interest to some that a small folding knife (under 6cm) is actually allowed now.  Traveling with a work colligue through Gatwick we tested this as he’d forgotten a small swiss army knife in his bag and goot pulled at security (for something else).  He admitted the knife and showed it to security and they said it was fine, ok to take on a plane.

https://www.gov.uk/hand-luggage-restrictions/personal-items

ooh I’ve just remembered a good one – we made packed lunch for us and the kids as we weren’t sure what we would eat or when

Mrs Ed put everything in my bag because there was space

I get stopped by Manchester security – boiled eggs are completely solid and show up like a potentially hazardous bomb equipment item ! unpack, do another lap, good humoured

Flew from Mumbai to Dubai. In my jacket pockets were an Asthma inhaler & insect repelant spray. I’d forgotten about them & passed through Mumbai security with no issue.

At security in Dubai I put my jacket in the tray to pass through the scanner

“You have spray in your jacket”

“Oh, yeah its an Asthma inhaler”

Security lady opens the other pocket, the one with the insect repellant in.

“Ah, I’d forgotten about that”

“Passport”

Handed it over

“come with me”

20 minutes sat in a little room trying to look calm before she came back with my passport.

Had about 12 hours mooching around before my flight, company directors were on a later connecting flight and they didn’t arrive until about 2 hours before.

Not me, but mrs kcal – had previously been to a children’s party, pocketed one of these plastic sparky guns (friction triggers generates sparks). Anyway, grabbed same jacket for trip down to Lancashire to visit relatives – security scan showed up the gun shaped thing. Fair cop. They were pretty good about it, she was mortified.

Dublin to Stanstead after a weekend on the piss visiting my wife who was working out there for another week

Hand luggae in scanner flagged up

‘do you have any liquids’

‘no’

‘did you pack your own bag’

‘yes’

‘then whats this?’

… 2x 1 litre bottles of conditioner my wife had slipped in the front pocket because it was much cheaper than at home and she didnt want to have to carry them herself!

As I have dredlocks it was obviously not mine, they were confiscated

Everything.

Got stopped at Landvetter (Göteborg) with a positive ping for explosives. Quiet room, baggage everywhere, everything opened and checked. Swabs on everthing, bottles opened. FFS.

All clear, made the flight (to AMS IIRC), due to vagaries of cheap airlines i then had to go out and in to get my connecting flight to Manchester. Same story. Got pinged, unpack again, check everything.

I was only going for a long weekend.

Worst one was what they *didn’t* find. Bought one of the bigger opinel locking knives with custom decoration on one of my early (or maybe even first) trips to the continent to race. I drove over with a couple of mates, bikes in bags. Knife also dropped in the bag, it disappeared into the lining/padding somewhere between Ghent and Yorkshire.

Must have travelled another 100 times with that bag, probably 50% flying. The knife reappeared when i cut the bag up to take the stiffeners out to put the whole thing in a wheelie bin when it got too knackered to use again. (The knife has since disappeared again.)

Got some very strange looks in, I think Port Moresby, with a bag full of random pipe fittings and some other miscellaneous engine room bits the office dumped on me in Singapore. Security tried to stop me but I was last one through and the puddle jumper looked like it was about to go without me, so I just mumbled ships spares in transit and kept going.

Got stuck behind an absolute walloper arguing with security in Lerwick about his fossilised shark tooth, he wasn’t having any of it. He didn’t make the plane.