TSA Rules on Tools in Carry On

[JerryC]

I think it is to prevent passengers from going berserk when the loud person next to them has an 8 hour conversation with Aunt Martha about her hemorrhoids that the whole plane can hear.

I've been on a flight where there was phone service for a price and the person a couple of seats back had a call going. But is that really any worse than the time the two ladies behind me spent two hours talking about their love affairs in the trailer park? Or the time a just out of prison ex-con in the seat next to me had to tell me his life story? Actually all of those were somewhat amusing, the worst thing I've endured on a plane was four hours of screaming infant because its ears hurt.

 

[Spacey_G]

Imo, the cell phone rules are there to promote deference to authority more than any practical reason. The same is true for many of the silly TSA rules.

 

[70staged]

Checked my bag the other day and man was I nervous. Checked bag said Snap On, needed to travel with my 1/4 drive sockets and ratchet. The bag came in 3 flights after I landed. Worried it wasn’t going to make it and I was going to be that Snappy socket set.
Next question, can you carry on a a Carburetor? What about a socket set.

 

[Lassen Forge]

Imo, the cell phone rules are there to promote deference to authority more than any practical reason. The same is true for many of the silly TSA rules.

The whole "phones in airplane mode" is so you can't use them to communicate with other cell-phone carrying jihadis on that or another flight, to recreate 9-11. Has nothing to do with "instrumentation", as the whole technology behind phones has changed.

The checkpoints are a psychological game. Who's gonna bolt before, who's sweating while standing in the detector X ray, who looks really nervous during something really boring and mundane? El Al did it for years, and now we copy them.

What gets me is the whole PreCheck and "Clear" programs... how come some flights I get a PreCheck OK, and others, I get to take off shoes, belts, and who knows what? (And what is it about taking off your belt, anyway???).