Avoiding Air Travel Restrictions
Air travel restrictions can change overnight, so it is always best to check the Travel Security Administration (TSA) guidelines any time you travel by air. Better yet, get to your destination by train, automobile, boat or bicycle.
Dangerous Liquids?
I’ll never forget when a friend and I took a road trip a couple years ago from southern California to Denver, Colorado, to attend a wedding. We drove a compact, high-fuel-economy car and split the driving up over more than two days.
Our friends in Denver made jokes at our expense because we were not flying to the wedding. Flying would have been faster for sure, and cheaper too, because we stayed in hotels along the way. We wanted to experience the leisurely pace of a road trip, unburdened by air travel restrictions.
On the second day of our trip, several U.K. citizens were arrested in a so-called terrorism plot, based on plans to blow airplanes into bits mid-flight over the Atlantic Ocean, using some mysterious form of liquid or gel TNT that could be mixed up in the airplane bathroom.
At once, air travel restrictions changed. Friends who were flying to the wedding that day had to ditch their liquid and gel toiletries in giant dumpsters at the airport security lines. Air travel restrictions required that no one could carry on liquids, even bottled water that might be combined to make explosives.
My friend and I arrived in Denver that night just in time to watch the late news programs showing large trash bins, stuffed full of makeup, shampoo and water bottles, all oozing together into a murky mass.
Red Terror Alert Level
Amazingly, none of these liquids, mixed together in the airport dumpsters, exploded when they were combined. Moreover, scientists quickly weighed in on the extremely low likelihood of any passenger or group of passengers having the time, the equipment and the aptitude to mix foul-smelling chemicals in the airplane bathroom without attracting the attention of crew or fellow passengers.
Nevertheless, the federal Homeland Security Department cranked the national threat level up to red (severe), terrifying hundreds of thousands of Americans into believing they were at risk for terrorist attack.
Relaxed Air Travel Restrictions
Eventually, air travel restrictions were relaxed to allow passengers to once again carry on eye drops, insulin, breast milk, shampoo, deodorant and various other liquids and gels, but air travel restrictions were placed on their packaging and size. From time to time, other restrictions are lifted, such as the restriction on fingernail clippers, which are now permitted on U.S. domestic flights.
Back in Denver, angry wedding guests arrived later than planned and had to spend hours replacing toiletries that had been confiscated at their home airports so they could wash their hair and apply makeup before the big wedding. Of course, my friend and I were congratulated on having avoided air travel restrictions by taking a road trip.
