Lenny Bruce had a bit - Unsked Airlines - from about 1960 which started from a news story about a man who put a bomb in his mother’s luggage, and then took out lots of flight insurance on her. :eek:
I also always flew with a Swiss Army knife. George Carlin had a bit, from before 9/11, on how stupid it was to let people fly with knives. If they had put him in charge, things may have come out differently.
As for screening, I forget when it started but in December 1970 I flew from Boston to Texas with my hamster carried in my camera bag. I checked his cage (and they asked if there was an animal in there) but no one ever checked or X-rayed my bag. It turned out to be lucky, since we got stuck overnight in Houston, and he would have starved in luggage. By 1977 this was no longer possible.
You might be surprised. In 1999, my wife and I flew from Boston Logan to Louisiana for Christmas. We lived in an apartment at the time and our pet was a 3 1/2 foot long iguana that we had raised from a tiny thing. We couldn’t find anyone to take care of him over the holidays so I went out and bought one of those pet carrier bags that looks like a regular carry-on bag and put him in it. We got up to the security line for the terminal with bag in hand and I told the security people not to X-ray the bag because there was a carry-on pet in it. A woman took the bag and I told her before she opened it that it contained a rather large iguana. I dont think she knew what an iguana really was. A couple of other security guards wandered over as she opened it.
I don’t know if you know much about iguanas but they can be fast and vicious. As some as she opened the bag, Attila leaped onto her chest, she screamed and panicked as did all other other security guards. Attila jumped down and starting running down the terminal. I just bolted through security at a dead run and caught him. I brought him back. They were all completely shocked and we just got waved towards the plane after I put him back in the bag.
And that, friends, was the origin of Snakes on a Plane.
Getting another hamster from Champaign Illinois to LAX in 1977 was directly responsible for me getting married - but that’s not a story for GQ. (Way too long.)
Yeah. I am more of a “It is easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission in the first place” type person. We were in a real bind in getting that big lizard taken care of so I looked on every informational website I could. As best I could tell, the airlines had a policy for carry-on pets for domestic travel but I couldn’t find much related to actual restrictions with airport security. Iguanas weren’t on the approved airline list but I figured I could deal with the airline (as in never mention it) and security didn’t have an actual restriction so that is what we did. Thank god it was before 6 am when we went through security and rather vacant or it might not have made such a good story.
There was some woman that took a full-sized pig on an airplane around then. It went crazy and traumatized the passengers by running up and down the isles so I wasn’t the only one.
You could do a lot of stuff back in the day (pre-9/11). I always carried a knife through as well. Everclear (nearly pure alcohol for drinking) wasn’t a problem although you could easily torch an airliner bathroom big time with a couple of bottles and a lighter (which was also allowed). From the stories, I always thought that my parents generation had all kinds of freedom that I didn’t have. Now, my kids are going to say the same about us. If this goes on for another generation or two, we are going to have a big problem.
That’s what the more level-headed types said after 9/11, while the other 99% of the population were running around like this lady screaming for their freedom to be taken away.
This thread makes me think of one time when I passed through airport security in Kathmandu. It was a domestic flight – the international flights actually were strict – but people were going through or around the metal detector, depending on which direction they happened to be veering in anyway. Which didn’t matter, because the detector was actually turned off.
Checking for metals/weapons and certain forbidden items before boarding gate, no walk-ons: early 70s, the “take me to Havana” fad, Black September, and “DB Cooper”.
“Did you pack your own luggage/has it been within your reach at all times?”, and showing ID, plus some basic but loose level of passenger/bag matching: after the Lockerbie bombing (1989). The question has since been abandoned.
First attempts at limiting your carry-ons, first increase of awareness of the arrest powers for Air Rage cases: late 1990s
No one at the gate but ticketed passengers (*), no cutting instruments, security run by an actual government agency rather than rent-a-guards; secondary searches, greater (still only partial) bag-matching: post- 9/11
(*Though most USA airports used to allow the unticketed to enter the safe zone, in many places they were already barred: at SJU since at least the mid-70s for BOTH the gates AND baggage claim)
Virtually no carry-on allowed (UK flights), after the Aug. of 2006 “liquid bomb” plot. US rectified to a more reasonable arrangement (the 3-ounce limit).
Actually, not all that shortly afterward - my freshman year of college was 1986-87, and more than once, I flew People Express home, buying a ticket on board after the plane was already in the air. The first time was especially exciting; as I didn’t have a credit card, I’d specifically called to ask ahead of time if I could pay by check. They told me I could, but neglected to mention that I needed to have a credit card to give the info as backup. I think they seriously intended to hold me hostage after the plane landed, until the nice guy sitting next to me offered to have me write the check to him and pay for my ticket with his credit card.
Phoenix Sky Harbor has a particularly surreal way of enforcing the 3-ounce limit. All liquids 3 ounces and under have to be put in the quart-size, drawstringed bags that they provide for you. Fine. Annoying, but whatever. The problem is that these are located before you enter security, and you aren’t told that they are required until you are about halfway through. So you do the huge loop back to the start of security, change the bags out, then the person who just checked your ID before escorting you around the loop wants to see your ID again!
You have to show your ID 4 times over a distance of about 50 feet to get through security there.
I saw the People Express onboard ticket sales when flying them from the U.S. to Europe and thought that was a hoot. I’d bought mine ahead of time but wondered what would happen if someone said they’d “forgotten” their wallet. Could have made for an interesting lark on a boring day.
TSA evidently has decided that not only is being feared more effective than being loved, but it also covers for not being respected, taken seriously, or considered to perform their job well. Then again the airlines themselves aren’t exactly earning our admiration and applause at how they treat us, are they.
I flew through Logan on the evening of September 10th, 2001. Our flight from Iceland was late and they were telling us we were going to have to catch an early flight the next morning (luckily we didn’t, we caught the last flight to Toronto that night).
Going from check-in to the gate I went through security once. It was the standard metal detector and guard with magic wand. No checking for a boarding pass, friends and relatives could walk you to the gate. There was also an exit, which bypassed security, to allow these people to leave. After having gone through security once, I walked out that exit to have a smoke outside. When I came back the security line had two dozen people queued up for it. I walked through the exit I had taken to get out.
When I awoke the next day and discovered two of the planes flew out of Logan, I knew why.
