Unless contained inside a hard TSA approved case like the Otterbox.

Craig.

One of these days I'm going to fly in a toga with 99 cent flip flops and no luggage. The screening requirements are beginning to get silly.

If this didn't pass muster, you don't stand a chance.

One of these days, if we don't stand up to all this BS, you are going to be REQUIRED to fly with a toga, flip flops, and no luggage. I doubt inmates at San Quentin are treated any worse than the flying public. At least I believe the DOC officers are are telling them what the rules are.

In my mind, the terrorists have won. They have succeeded in in getting us to suffer through any humiliation or indignity in the name of "safety." I think Benjamin Franklin said "he who gives up liberty in the name of safety deserves neither." Incredible how smart those founding fathers were, ain't it.

Craig.

One of these days we will all be flying naked ('cept on SW Airlines of course)...

I haven't flown in about three years, not because I'm afraid of flying, but because the whole experience had gotten so darned inconvenient and uncomfortable. I truly empathize with those who have to fly routinely, especially today.

I flew to Europe a couple of times in the mid-70s, after the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics. What we are experiencing now was routine in European airports even then. It was not unusual to be selected at random for a pat-down search, for example.

It's a bad old world out there. We in the US are only beginning to get the picture.

Commercial planes are better equipped than you ever can or will be.

http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_121.html

Let me put it to you this way.

If your commercial jet goes down on takeoff, if you survive, and you can walk, then you'll get away and be treated quickly.

See this:
http://break.com/index/bangkok-plane-crash-survivor-footage.html

If you don't walk away, you're most likely dead.
Same goes for landing. We're not talking about small planes here, we're talking about big planes.

I can find no record of any survivors of a mid-air incident involving commercial jets.

The movie with Tom Hanks - the one where he's on a desert island for years and years - is fiction. The impact from a plane crashing into the ocean is more than enough to "de-glove" the body from the skeleton, and the idea of going from 300+ knots to zero in milliseconds - and surviving to eat crabs over a fire started with a fresnel lens is, at best, amusing and at worst, a delusional fantasy.

When I travel, I mail the stuff I might need - on the ground - to the hotel where I'm staying. If I check bags (rarely), I put the not allowed stuff in there, but I almost never check bags.

An old thread about an air crash ( a short time after take-off and while the plane was trying to fly back to the airport) :
Gabon Express crash
My (ex)co-worker, who was in that plane, survived.
He "only" spent two hours in the water, before being rescued.
Had this happened at dusk/night, a waterproof or at least water resistant flashlight for signaling could have been a real life saver.

EDC what you can... you never know what will happen, what will come handy... or more than that !

(OTOH a kitchen sink would NOT have been useful, in those circumstances)

I hate to go OT, but it *really* bugs me when a person is shooting video when he should be HELPING people.

C'mon, a he films a guy walking past him, sloaked with blood. Sorry, I'm not going to help you, dude, I'm SO putting this on Youtube!

There seems to be this idea that if you're behind a camera, you're not really there, you're really at home watching it passively on TV.

P.S. I was very impressed that the that jet engine could continue to run while floating in the sea, threatening to suck up Tom Hanks like that.

Not to discredit the fictional nature of that, but you would be amazed at just how much water, ice, chicken, and dynamite can be flung through a jet engine.