When science fiction writer (and Boing Boing blogger) Cory Doctorow was flying through London’s Gatwick Airport yesterday, he lost his favorite 686 belt when security personal decided that the belt was technically a “restricted item.”
The guard who confiscated it had this explanation for why the belt buckle was being confiscated here when all the other UK airports I’d flown out of it with had let me keep it: “I stick to what they’ve told me” . . At that point, a supervisor, Pete Sutherland, the security leader for Gatwick North, gave me a copy of Dangerous and restricted items: what you cannot take on board a flight, which lists, under “work tools,” “screwdrivers.”
Doctorow says that in the three years he had the belt he’s used the screwdrivers dozens of times: “always in some moment of traveller’s extremes, when something really important was really broken. They’ve been figurative lifesavers, and I think if I had them long enough, they’d have been literal ones.”
Sounds like we’re going have to get him another one.
[Link: Boing Boing]
Heathrow Terminal 5 they threatend to call the cops on me cos i thought it was a joke that they asked for my belt with a gun-buckle- the ‘gun’ was about 3 inches long and actually only a gun shaped buckle.
A colleague with an eastpak bag with prints of 9mm’s all over it was told it would be confiscated if she every brought it into the airport again. After ‘sensitive’ enquiries it was explained that these steps are all taken to put passengers at ease at not to alarm them pre-flight….
Last year i flew back from the Billabong pro at chopes and my hand luggage passed through security and metal detectors at Tahiti, LAX and Paris. I got home and there was a litre of juice in an unopened carton and a hunting knife (i’d been camping). Neither were spotted at any of the security checks. I guess the security checks and metal detectors are only there to put passengers at ease before they fly………
HA! I saw this exact thing happen at the John Wayne Airport about 9 years ago to a guy I was traveling with! Understood, I guess.
Comments on this entry are closed.