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I ended up finding a way to get cigarette lighters through with a 100% success rate just by brute forcing it. If you travel a lot and you're a smoker you'd kno
by nikcub 12y ago
I ended up finding a way to get cigarette lighters through with a 100% success rate just by brute forcing it.
If you travel a lot and you're a smoker you'd know that the worst part is getting off the flight, crawling through the airport at exit and then not having a lighter because they took it off you at departure[1].
No penalty for being caught with a lighter, so I kept leaving lighters in my bag in different places deliberately to figure out how I could get one through.
Solution turned out to be simple, and I hit it almost accidentally. I removed the metal shield and then dropped the lighter into an inside pocket of my bag that contains pens and loose coins.
Worked 100% of the time thereafter.
The scanners being blacklisting like a virus scanner means they have the same problem, they can only identify known threats. Change the form of the threat and you're through until they update and train their scanners again (both human and machine).
The illusion of safety. I've since quit both smoking and flying frequently.
[1] I gave the TSA the idea of handing out lighters they have confiscated from departing passengers to arriving passengers but they didn't buy into it.
- toong 12y agoIn Europe they let you keep your lighter, at least inside the Schengen Area.
- MeinCrapf 12y agoThey do in the US, too.
- iamtew 12y agoThat seems very odd that they would take a lighter. Mind you I've been on very few domestic US flights, and on a few flights in/out of the US, but I never had problems with lighters. I just drop it on the plate they send through the X-ray and pick it up afterwards, no issues. This was within the last 4 years though, maybe procedures have changed? Here in EU I've never had any problems either. The only thing that I know they frown upon is Zippo lighters, unless it's brand new and still sealed. Something about the petrol being used in those lighters they don't like.
- MeinCrapf 12y agoThey started allowing lighters again 7 years ago.
- jo_ 12y agoSome lighters. Regular ones are okay, I think, but I had my butane torch confiscated last May in San Francisco. I'd been carrying it around for three or four years and had never been stopped. I've also brought a swiss army knife on numerous flights, pretty much always by accident.
- MeinCrapf 12y agoYou sure you didn't make that change around August, 2007? http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/lighters-and-matches http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/lighters-and-matches
- JoblessWonder 12y agoIs that an example of confirmation bias? "I finally moved it around and tweaked it enough and that is what caused the success" instead of "the TSA changed the rules?"
- endersshadow 12y agoNo; it's post hoc ergo propter hoc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
- nikcub 12y agoProbably should have dated it - this is from right after 911 I remember when the change happen, because there were no longer the large bins and signs at both SFO and Sydney. Lighters were the biggest single item holding up security queues prior to the liquids changes after the TATP '06 plots. The one year period after summer 2006 was the worst possible time to travel, routinely took an hour to pass through most checkpoints.