r/comics • u/aostlund27 A Penny For Your Thoughts • 29d ago

OC Airport Security (OC)

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u/Narradisall 29d ago edited 29d ago

Airport security in the US can be intense.

I once went through and my bag flagged up. I had a battery bank I’d forgotten about in a side pocket i didnt use. Must have flagged up as a big block.

The security guy went off when I couldn’t immediately find it “WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THE BAG? SHOW ME WHAT IT IS?” Right screaming.

Then went and (after I explained where the hidden pock was) found it and said “oh it’s just a battery charger I forgot I had in here.” It was like a flip switched and he was just cheery “oh ok. Move on”.

Weirdest thing ever.

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u/soccer1124 29d ago

I was flying out of the US to join my fiancee. My bags were very strategically packed for weight limits. My carry-on got flagged. I had one of those Woodwick Boat candles. She really liked them. If you dont know what they are, they can look strange. They are football/boat shaped, and instead of a normal wick, there's a long chunk of wood to serve that purpose (which makes a pleasant crackling sound when lit)

TSA guy had no clue what it was and ttying to make sense of it.

"Its a candle."

He was not buying it. I ended uo having to go through a full patdown afterwards. I have no idea how having a candle in my bag requires that, but whatever.

I wasnt able to keep my mouth shut though and tried to joke with him, "You guys really take candles seriously, huh?"

Got a stern, "Yes. We do." in response, lol

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u/FPSCanarussia 29d ago

I don't think a Roentgen scanner can tell apart wax and trinitrotoluene. It's just a solid mass of material with a wick in it.

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u/MoonlitSonatas 29d ago

For some reason this made the time TSA flagged a hockey puck in my carry on make sense - luckily the combo of hockey puck and a shirt with my hometown team on it lead to the agent who found it not needing me to elaborate that I had simply grabbed the puck as a souvenir as it was one of the first years that city had a team.

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u/Sogemplow 29d ago

Absolutely right. They're both also denser than food or toothpaste or things that are normal to see in a bag and very similar in density.

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u/smurf123_123 29d ago

The new scanners are able to differentiate density much better. You can have two litres of liquids in your carry on at London Heathrow for example.

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u/rynthetyn 29d ago

They're rolling those at at US airports too, but they don't always have the new scanners in every line at every airport yet, so it's a crapshoot whether you can have big containers of liquid in your bag or not.