#363: Flight safe

It’s a little absurd but apparently the world’s airports are now clogged up with a surplus of nail scissors and swiss army knives.

The US Transportation Security Administration (who thinks up these grandiose departmental titles, The Directorate of Official Administrative Nominativism?) said 10 million prohibited items have been seized or voluntarily turned over this year nationwide. So much so that auctioning these items, in small lots online, is actually a pretty profitable sideline for the airport authorities.

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So I wondered recently when having to surrender my olive oil-filled can of Baltic herring at an Estonian airport, how do these things get transmitted to their new owners? If any of these confiscated cannisters actually do contain explosive material, then sending them via the post, by loading on a different plane, truck or ship would seem like a pretty bad idea. Imagine the lawsuits if an airport transmits a bomb to some hapless bidder?

Anyway, today’s invention is a simpler approach to those items which are considered too dangerous to enter the cabin but which are not suspected of being explosive. The airport would sell passengers a metal box each, into which they could place their nailfiles, skinning knives and handcuffs. This woud then be locked and the key posted to a passenger’s onward address, enabling their box to be carried aboard but opened only when their journey was complete.

Passengers might be allowed to reuse their box, buying just a new padlock from security for each trip.

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