Is it hard to be on a plane (for however long) without a pocketknife?

I guess some people always carry their pocket knife with them and don’t want to check a bag for that one thing. Kind of like me having to check my bag because I want to bring my particular hair mousse.

Not exactly the same though.

OK, if that’s true, I will be pissed off.
Every time I fly, I am subject to the indignity of getting my genitals groped or checked out on a screen, and now people are allowed to carry pocket knives???

@bookish1 It’s true.

At least it’s not guns…

Yes, it is. I carry mine routinely and use it probably an average of twice a day. It’s small but efficient and very handy. I hate to leave it behind when I travel.

I once had to get out of the security line and go all the way back out and mail it to myself at a special kiosk for $10.00 and then start over again at the end of the line. It was 3 a.m. and I was on my way across country to my mother’s deathbed, and I was distraught enough already (undoubtedly why I forgot to leave it at home), and so to be stopped and told that I’d lose the knife my husband gave me before we were married was very upsetting. I never thought I’d see it again, but it showed up in the mail about three months later.

Please note that I am answering the question as asked: yes, it is hard to be on a plane or other long journey without a pocket knife. I am not arguing a case for or against. However, these restrictions didn’t exist very long ago, and I never heard of a single on-board incident involving a pocket knife, nail scissors, a cigarette lighter, bottled water, or shampoo.

It is not hard, just irritating.

@Jeruba That is awful! I had a hassle with security flying home from my gandmother’s funeral; I was in tears right there at the airport because of it. They wanted me to check a bag with my grandmother’s things and I refused.

As far as the ban on all knives, it was because of 911. I’m pretty sure some of the weapons used on the plane were small knives or box cutters, something like that. You probably know this already. The liquid thing is because one can make a bomb with various liquids. I think there was some sort of liquid incident and that triggered the rules.

I’m with you though, some of the rules are too extreme. The knife rule is not as strict now, but there are still rules for how long the blade can be to board a plane.

Not since I got un-used to carrying my fantastic SOG everywhere after it got stolen from a checked bag. Effing airport security. We can take them through now? Sweet!

Let’s hope none of the non peace loving moderate muslims in pursuit of their 42 virgins find out about this!

Yes, they were box cutters. I was only 13 at the time and I remember that distinctly.
I’ve had diabetes supplies confiscated by TSA. After preparing diligently with doctors’ letters, etc. When ostensibly there are regulations to protect people who need medications. Cry me a river about how you need a pocket knife on the plane. Suck it up and put it in your checked baggage. Traveling requires forethought like that.
Ugh, whatever I guess, we face death every day, and in a bureaucratized world, irrational decisions of functionaries are more likely than not to be involved somehow. >_<

@bookish1 That is ridiculous that they took diabetic supplies. It’s hard not to wish for some sort of Karma when stuff like that happens.

The rules prohibiting knives were put in place as a knee-jerk reaction to the September 11 hijackings, which were, of course, carried out with box cutters and other small knives. So, “no knives”. (Some may recall that the airlines also jumped on this by using plastic tableware – when they still served meals on long flights. At least that represented a real weight savings to the airlines – and then some started to drop meals altogether.)

Of course, the entire pretext for the September 11 hijackings was “no one has ever hijacked a plane to destroy it”, so cutting off access to the flight deck is what saves planes now. Knives in the cabin would never be more than a person-to-person problem. (Small knives can still kill, but so can ball point pens, shoelaces, shoes themselves, fists and feet, armlocks around necks, etc.) The ban on knives was meant to demonstrate that “TSA is on top of this; no one will ever hijack a plane with a box cutter again because we learned a lesson.” What few people seem to realize is that a group of strong men with fire axes would be required to break down the door to the flight deck. No more American planes are flying into buildings now that the blinders have been taken off about “what hijacking means”.

The lesson that the flying public has not yet learned is that the TSA is a huge waste of time and money and is no more integral to “safe flight” than the caterer. But people seem to enjoy their “security theater”, so they line up for it and smile through it.

@CWOTUS Would you want to get rid of all security check at the airport? Even the metal detectors?

I heard a few weeks ago that some airports will no longer be using the xray type machines that remove your clothes. I am not sure why they made the change.

I no longer fly but have carried around a moderately complex Swiss Army knife in my purse for 40 years. It is the handiest of gadgets and I use it often (How can you not love the nail file, wee scissors or tooth pick?) However, I have never toted hair products anywhere.

I have never used a pocket knife on a plane because it’s not an environment where I typically need it. But once on the ground, who knows when I might need to open a letter, or remove bag tags, or trim loose threads, or any of a dozen other things?

Did they just use the knives as a high-profile indication that they’re going to stop being irrational about what you carry on in your pocketses?

Please allow me to turn around your hypothetical question to me, @JLeslie:

If you think the presence of metal detectors at airport security check-in areas makes you safer and is a necessary thing, then why don’t we have them at all public assembly points, everywhere? Why not at sporting events, bus, rail and subway terminals, theaters and grocery stores, to name a few? (I realize that some schools and most court houses already have them.)

The point is that these things do add “some” measure of security. I am one who happens to believe very strongly in what Benjamin Franklin said on the topic: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

We would be more secure, still, if we were herded naked and handcuffed onto airplanes and then shackled to the seats. Think of me and my arguments when that someday becomes “the next reasonable step in security”.

@CWOTUS I was just curious your opinion. I might have asked you this previously, the conversation is familiar.

As to your point about trains and buses, trains need to be on a track, so they can only go so far off route. People on the train are at risk and whatever might be near the track if they sped the train off the rails. Buses also can cause some harm of course also smashing into a populated area and the passangers could be at risk if hijacked, but a plane can be catastrophic to an area if it comes crashing down. The point made above about the most important thing about no weapons being the pilots cannot be harmed is a valid point. I wonder if the are instructed to let everyone die as long as they land the plane safely?

I want the metal detectors, because I don’t want passangers with firearms on a plane, a blown out windoow sounds pretty bad to me at 30k feet, but I am not worried about a pocket knife or a pair of small purse scissors.

I guess my point is that I look not only at tye harm that can come to the passangers, but also the bigger picture.

Current flight deck security measures are in place not only so that “the pilots cannot be harmed”, but also so that no one is allowed to commandeer the controls of the aircraft. Until September 11 there had never been a practical consideration of the likelihood of a suicide-minded flight-capable hostile takeover of an aircraft. It had never occurred in commercial aviation. Hijackings until then had always been either for-profit or for political reasons involving trading hostages for prisoners. In those cases making certain that the pilots were not harmed or prevented from doing their jobs (albeit that they were required to fly different flight plans than they intended) was a key goal of the hijackers.

If you believe that the reason current airport security measures are justified is to prevent widespread catastrophic damage on the ground (in addition to the plane and its passengers and crew itself, which are all certainly worth security concern), then you’ve drunk the Kool Aid. It won’t be any trouble at all for the government to assure you – as they will never assure me – that “we can protect you from people with guns on buses, too” if only you’ll let us put “this” and “this” and “this” safety measure in place. “It’s for the children.” It’s not for the children. It’s never for the children.

@bookish1 Wow…they confiscated your diabetes gear?! There are no words. What possible reason did they give? They always let me take my metal knitting needles through, even right after 9/11; why on earth would they object to syringes? I can’t even imagine what they might have been thinking…were they worried you had a deadly chemical or something and planned to inject a crew member?

Re: sucking it up – I’d be happy to check it, but I just dont want it to get stolen by baggage handlers again. It was a gift from a friend and worth over $100, and the claim I made for its loss never went anywhere.

@CWOTUS I’m not drinking anyone’s Kool Aid, I am very willing to listen to the facts and the arguments. I have never even heard anyone talk about the dangers of a plane crash vs a train crash, I just wrote that from my own head now. Most people when they talk about the topic think in terms of their own safety as a passenger. I am not asking for metal detectors on trains or buses. Nor in schools for that matter, unless the area seems to warrant. I hope all Memphis schools have metal detectors, I don’t know if they do. Gun incidents happen all too often here in Memphis. Probably every year they confiscate guns from students, let alone students actually holding a gun on another or shooting each other.

It is hard to be without freedom even for a second. I think it is absurd that I cannot take anything the owner of the plane and myself agree on.

I have to leave soon so this is brief, and I was only able to scan the comments… hope I’m not repeating anything. To me, it’s hard. Once out of high school I put my leatherman on my keychain, I use it daily for various things.
I remember my mom had a swiss army knife, one my father had had since he was a boy, but had since given my mom. We were going through security, and at the end of it they pulled her keys out and told her she had to mail it or let it go. Both my parents felt the time and money would be better spent elsewhere, so they let it go. Still makes me sad.
My sister and I had crochet projects when we were kids, and so we had dinky little scissors in our kits. The security pulled my sister’s bag out to search, went through it, and took her scissors. I was so mad I pulled mine out of my bag and demanded (at the age of 7 so I got away with it) “why not mine too?” The security guard showed me how my sister’s scissor’s tips were pointed but mine had round tips; my dad had to pull me back after that, because I then started demonstrating how well mine cut even with their round tips…

Of course you survive through not having the object(s). For me, though, it’s hard because of more than just not having something to snip a snagged nail or thread from a t-shirt, etc… (although that is inconvenient.) It hurts to have my things taken away from me, it hurts to not be able to have everyday items with me, because someone at some point decided to be ugly and use them as weapons. It makes me sad, because I start thinking about all that ugliness, and how much society adapts to it, and how much of that adaptation is lack of trust…

@bookish1 . Unreal. Please come back and let us know more about it. That is just crazy scandolous. What part of necessity did they not know? That should make the news.
I hope it is one of those silly mistakes by one employee. Golf clubs hockey sticks among the other things allowed now.

No. I have no need for such things. Where would you store a golf club or a hockey stick on a plane anyway? Do they have closets on the plane? Exactly why you should try and avoid flying whenever possible. You don’t need to worry about checking bags or packing too much. If you can and your destination is drivable, just drive.

@AshlynM Where would you store a golf club or a hockey stick on a plane anyway? Do they have closets on the plane? This is what I was thinking when I heard the news I didn’t think those overhead spaces were big enough for the hockey and golf items.
I thought for a second I might have gobbled up garbage news, and I checked but Google says it is true:
For a few hours, or a day, I think I can manage to do without a lot! It find it is worth it.