A few years back I found myself about to wander through airport security in Paris with a Swiss army knife in my pocket. I had meant to put it in my checked luggage, but had forgotten; groaning inwardly, I stuck it in a pocket of my carry-on bag.
After a ritual removing of my shoes, losing my pants through having to undo my belt and being prodded in undignified places, I sailed through security – so did my Swiss army knife.
Sadly, a year or so later, I lost it to a paranoid Russian ex-commissar at the entrance to a museum in St. Petersburg.
The moral of the story is that you are more likely to be stabbed by a Swiss army knife on a plane than in a Russian museum.
From here:
Boxcutters on Flight From JFK — No, We’re Not Safer Than Before 9/11.
Recently a passenger brought box cutters through a passenger screening point and on to an airliner. In response to this, the Transportation Security Administration announced that the screeners responsible would get “remedial training.”
There’s been a lot of coverage of this event, including legitimate outrage that the sloppy TSA employees weren’t fired. What most people don’t realize is that tolerating failure and outright sloppy work has been a hallmark of U.S. aviation security from the beginning. The truth is nobody has ever been held accountable for aviation security failures – nobody. From top to bottom, the TSA arrogantly claims it does nothing wrong.
