I received the following tongue-in-cheek report from another airline pilot friend. You just gotta love the biting sarcasm of this piece…
I’m a pilot and we aircrew are not subject to the same rules as the rest of the traveling public. We have to carry on all of our luggage and, therefore, cannot put our highly explosive personal grooming and hygiene products in a checked bag like the rest of you terrorists. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t see what’s happening to the general public as they are unreasonably harassed by TSA personnel.
Yesterday morning as I was going through screening at (airport name deleted), the gentleman in front of me had taken to task the rule of putting his explosive toothpaste and other unstable volatile hygiene products in a plastic baggie. The TSA agent pulled him aside because his toothpaste tube was too big.
Never mind that it had maybe three squeezes left in it and was obviously far less than the maximum 3 ounces. The tube had ‘6.4 oz.’ printed on it so it had to be confiscated and taken to the explosive ordinance disposal, (EOD), and disposed of like all the rest of the dangerous substances that subversives like you have tried to smuggle on board - especially deodorant and shave gel!
I breathed a sigh of relief as I stood in the doorway of my cockpit and greeted the passengers coming on the airplane and saw that same gentleman who had the dangerous toothpaste tube confiscated. Who knows what he might have tried to do with that tube while we were airborne? My passengers and crew were safe from that! Thank God! (for the TSA).
And thank God for airline pilots with a sense of humor…and a sense of common sense.
Posted on November 16th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
WE need to do racial profiling because any one can be a terrorist but most seem to be muslim! As for taking off shoes and socks and looking over toothpaste etc.. these tyrants at the airports are on a power trip, I mean lets face it, It is like the mad cartoon strips except real, they frisk grandma while heavily armed folks go thru with out being stopped and questioned etc…
I had to chuckle at this story as it happened to me earlier this year in going to Denver. I was kind of pissed when they took my nearly gone toothpaste. But when they took my aftershave I was ready to go ballistic. My wife just told me to go on and forget it. I would be pulled out of line and incarcerated and not be able to make the trip.
I think it was funny when I got home after the trip and found that I had forgotten to pull my contact wetting solution out and put in the plastic bag and the TSA would have definitely pulled that 6 oz container and disposed of it!!! Now you all know just how bad of a terrorist I really am.