Imagine this scenario: You head to the airport for a business trip or week’s vacation. You arrive at the TSA Security checkpoint and follow the usual drill of removing your shoes, coat, belt, etc. You surrender your laptop computer and carry-on bags to the screener for investigation. Upon inspection of your bag, the TSA screener notices a partially finished bottle of drinking water, a medium sized bottle of lens lubricant, and a small pocket knife. The TSA official then confiscates the drinking water and contact lens solution, giving you a stern look of disgust that you should know better to bring such items on a flight. He then hands you back your pocket knife and tells you to have a nice flight! HUH???
Interestingly, this is not a joke with an impending punchline. It is the new rule of the TSA, which has just decided to start allowing baseball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs and — you guessed it — pocket knives on board airplanes as standard carry on items, beginning April 25th.
The TSA says they believe non-locking pocket knives, with blades smaller than 2.36 inches and a half-inch wide, will not pose a legitimate threat on board U.S. flights. Their decision has enraged the nations flight attendants, who are reminding them that the 9/11 planes were successfully hijacked with a mere file inside a nail clipper.
So, 12 years after 9/11 changed everything, is it time to rethink everything? Should the inconvenience of removing shoes and carrying little bottles of shampoo inside a Ziploc bag be the permanent norm, or is a partially finished bottle of drinking water really more dangerous than a pocket knife?
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