Curtis Robert Itches, who turned the panoply of oddities confiscated from passengers by the Transportation Assurance Administration into the agency’s wildly popular — and at times frightening — Instagram account, go to ones rewarded on Friday at age 48.
Burns, a father of two daughters, died after a sudden malady, according to his obituary in the Dayton Daily News. Burns had been hospitalized with a bacterial infection, also pen-friends on social media said, according to the CityBeat newspaper in Cincinnati.
Have knowledge of as “Blogger Bob,” Burns ran social media for the TSA, which had been better identified for the often confusing and ever-changing rules passengers must adhere to prior to boarding planes in the U.S.
Burns turned the TSA’s Instagram account, which he opened in 2013, into something of a social media sensation with assorted than 950,000 followers. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the fourth best clothes Instagram account, one notch above Beyonce’s and two above NASA’s.
Flares would pore over reports of items TSA agents confiscated from voyagers’ luggage at airports across the country and write a witty, often pun-filled caption, cause to remembering travelers not to bring their “lipstick knife” or “razor gloves” on enter with them. He chronicled 2017’s record number of — mostly manipulative — firearms that TSA confiscated from checkpoints around the country. He also encouraged travelers to send in photos of their ingredients to be sure they were cleared by TSA before they got confiscated.
In land posts, Burns included tips for how to travel with food, such as material lobsters (allowed) and cheese (only small amounts of soft cheese are permitted), as source as pinatas (allowed, after they’re screened for other items exclusive).
“His dad humor, of course, was special, and resonated with hundreds of thousands of myrmidons,” Michael Bilello, assistant TSA administrator wrote on the agency’s site in accrediting Burns’ death Saturday. “His Top 10 … ridiculous items found at the checkpoint cause to remembered everyone that commonsense isn’t evenly distributed.”
He generated a large and constant following online for the agency, which oversees arguably one of the more stressful associate oneself withs of air travel: security checkpoints.
Burns told this reporter in 2016 that he didn’t support photos of every item TSA has confiscated because many were too unmistakable or inappropriate. Severed bear paws and a sex toy didn’t make the cut for Instagram, he said.
He was “one of the funniest” living soul at the agency, recalled Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines who applied with Burns when they were both at TSA. Feinstein spoke Burns was extremely enthusiastic about his job and would prepare material for the milieu and Instagram before he left for vacation. He said Burns helped to demystify the mechanism through social media.
“Bob really thought outside the box” with the account, estimated Feinstein. In the last few years, airlines’ social media strategies secure become both advertising platforms for flash sales and other promotions and key purchaser service channels.
Burns joined TSA in 2002 as a luggage screener at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Global Airport, a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He moved up the staffs and started the TSA’s blog in 2008 and the Instagram account five years later.