On Friday I spoke with Anne Davis, a TSA public affairs manager. "We encourage passengers to use common sense," she says. "When in doubt about a specific item, they should err on the conservative side and pack it inside their checked luggage. People should also review the guidelines on the TSA Web site."
I asked Davis if that same common sense applies to the agency's screeners.
"Absolutely. Our workers are highly trained, and we encourage them to exercise discretion when it comes to screening certain materials."
Personally, in my travels during the past few months, I've witnessed anything but discretion. What I've seen is a draconian obsession with the exactness of container sizes and their contents, including overzealous guards actually yelling at hapless passengers. Did some of that discretion finally came into play with Mom's tomato sauce?
"Probably," thought Davis.
Well, good for that. And as for mashed potatoes? TSA spokespeople aren't known for their senses of humor, but I was able to get a laugh.
"Well, I can't be sure," she said. "I suppose, as a rule of thumb, if you can spread it or smear it, you should probably stow it inside a checked bag."
This talk of spreading and smearing risked vectoring the conversation in a terrible direction, but I had one more question. Beginning Nov. 6, the European Union began enforcing its own liquids-in-a-baggie policy for carry-ons. The precise specs would appear to present a problem for European passengers connecting to U.S. domestic flights: the E.U.'s per-container standard is 100 milliliters; the American standard has been 90 milliliters, or 3 ounces. Technically, what's legal in Frankfurt, Paris or Rome would be contraband in New York, Chicago or Atlanta. Correct?
"No," informed Davis. "Airport security will not disallow items over any negligible difference. TSA and E.U. officials worked together in standardizing their procedures to avoid confusion. The Europeans chose the 100-milliliter standard because it best dovetails with ours."
Well, to be picky, 90 milliliters best dovetails with ours, but there's that discretion again -- and a salute to TSA for not confiscating personal care products over a teaspoon-size discrepancy. No sooner did I hang up the phone when I learned that the agency's policies have been officially altered. The 3-ounce, 90 ml limit we've gotten so used to is now a 3.4-ounce, 100 ml limit. Just who is dovetailing with whom?
And all of this is for what reasons, again? Because last summer, a stumblebum group of would-be British attackers, in possession of neither airline tickets nor passports, were maybe, possibly, hoping to brew liquid explosives, using methods that many experts contend would be extremely difficult or impossible to produce a bomb with.
Heaven help us. If you're venturing into this craziness anytime soon, you'll definitely need something funny to take along to keep you from going berserk at the X-ray machine or renouncing your citizenship and moving to Norway. Nothing would be better than a copy of SkyMaul, the in-flight shopping parody magazine created by award-winning, San Francisco-based comedy troupe Kasper Hauser. (Something about the word "troupe" conjures up visions of mimes, but K-H themselves use it in their promo material, so I'm going with it.)
SkyMaul is the perfect sendup to a concept -- in-flight catalog shopping -- that has been screaming to be sent up for a long, long time. The real SkyMall, which assumes that every American has an insatiable hunger for necktie organizers, remote-control pool toys and mail-order steak, is always just half a step away from self-caricature. The K-H gang of Rob Baedeker, Dan Klein and James and John Reichmuth give it that nudge into full hilarity. With 120 pages of fodder, it's hard to pick a favorite. I'm partial to the bee thermometer -- "There is only one way to know the true temperature of your bees" -- the Cry for Help Object, the Brooms of the World Collectors Set, and the Three Veterinarians of Nazareth figurines set: "In ancient times, these beast-healers gamboled about the countryside, laying hands upon sick flocks. Here we see Japeth and Magog looking on as Tomargah nurses a lamb back to consciousness with his own man-breast." It's the descriptions rather than the "products" themselves that make for the loudest guffaws.
"Our main goal was laughs," says Baedeker. "And there are many targets of satire: We went after the right and the left, the religious and fantasy zealots, consumer and business culture, and the language of advertising. SkyMaul's genesis was a series of boring plane trips. When we traveled to shows together, we would write fake captions over the photos in SkyMall, and pass the magazine back and forth across the aisle to try and crack each other up."
Haven't we all done that? I once made a birthday card entirely from SkyMall cutouts.
I can't think of anything more suitable to take along during a flight. Well, except of course for my own book. I hope Kasper Hauser has better luck with airport placement than I did with "Ask the Pilot," which was never widely available there. If over Thanksgiving you see piles of SkyMaul at Borders and Hudson Booksellers, by all means grab yourself a copy. Just don't tell me about it.
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Do you have questions for Salon's aviation expert? Send them to AskThePilot and look for answers in a future column.
About the writer
Patrick Smith is an airline pilot. His column is archived here.
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