From experience I can also report that the explosive power of a lighter dropped into a campfire is much less than a stick of dynamite. I can also report that the explosive power of a lighter dropped into a campfire is much less than the explosive power of a can of olives dropped into a campfire(thank god it was a water based can of olives, an oil filled can would have been very bad I think).
Seconded, along with another mental note to self: Carry a book of matches in pocket rather than get fleeced by airport kiosks selling $10 lighters next to the smoking area.
Perhaps the reference to political correctness was made on the assumption that this ban on butane lighters was spearheaded by the anti-cigarette brigade. I doubt that the tobacco police can be blamed for this one.
The news report I heard said they weren’t banning matches because they didn’t have a good way to search for them. Will lighters get caught in a scan? I’ve never been on a commercial airplane so I have no idea how those things work.
I was quite puzzled that, when returning recently to the U.S. from a vacation that we were told we could NOT carry a bunch of souvenir matchbooks (from the various restaurants we’d visted) in our checked luggage (which was hand-searched). But we COULD put them in my carry-on purse. Huh? How would they have been LESS dangerous in my purse (where had I been of a mind to I could have done something stupid and dangerous with them) than in the baggage compartment? And yet somehow it has also been o.k. to carry a lighter?
It was banned during the last Orange Alert.
Nah, This is pretty much impossible to enforce. The baggage scanners would catch a Zippo, and the walk-throughs would catch a Zippo and maybe a Bic depending on how turned up the machines are, but Bics and similar will probably routinely get through the baggage scanner undected, at least until the scanner personnel learn to identify them.
But if you’re TSA, whatcha gonna do? The law says ban lighters, you ban lighters.
Just a guess, but they may have been more concerned about safety than terrorism in that instance. If it was a pretty big batch of them they may have been concerned about spontaneous ignition in a cargo area. Was it a foreign airline or a small aircraft?
It was a big ol’ American Airlines 737. Those doing the hand-checking were the screeners in Barbados. They did not seem to have any x-ray machines, thus the need to put on latex gloves and go through everybody’s suitcases.
[QUOTE=Squink
The inconsistency in the treatment of matches and lighters makes me suspect that rule makers are moved more by their hatred of our freedom than any real concern for security.[/QUOTE]
Smilie when you say that, Stranger. :dubious:
I imagine there would be tremendous liability problem associated with that. If you were burned by a defective lighter the airline would be to blame. You can thank your local affiliate of Torts 'R Us for that one. The other drawbacks I can see are that you would have a ready supply of flammables by a gate where a would be terrorist could get “more bang for his buck” so to speak. I’m sure there are other reasons but these seem like fairly reasonable ones to me. I also doubt that anyone has thought of it.