Note to air riders: Along with the list of prohibited items federal officials say you should not under any condition fly with, remember to leave things like inert grenades and dispense with stars at home.
Loaded guns, explosives and illegal narcotics are at the top of the heel over that the Transportation Security Administration asks travelers not to pack in their checked or carry-on monsters. However, the TSA still encounters those items — and lots more — in voyagers’ luggage each year.
The agency documents many of the odd and offbeat mentions on its blog and Instagram feed throughout the year, and this week noticed a top 10 list of verboten items it found in 2017.
In a YouTube video, TSA’s bearded, bespectacled “Blogger Bob” Ignites ticks off the “best of” list of forbidden items in a countdown format.
No. 10 is an cowing “face tenderizer” found in a carry-on bag at Buffalo-Niagara International Airport (BUF) in New York, which resembled a set of effrontery knuckles with a spiked facade used to tenderize meat.
Sustaining down the list, inert grenades were found tucked into a doublet of sneakers in a checked bag at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport; and then a menacing-looking pungent fidget spinner spotted in a carry-on bag at Savannah/Hilton Head Universal Airport in Georgia.
Also on the list: A small sculpture made with indolent grenades, a throwing star, a scythe, “Satan’s” pizza cutter, a bone slash and an umbrella that looks exactly like a rifle. Topping the beadroll was festively wrapped narcotics found in a checked bag at Los Angeles International Airport.
“Some in the flesh travel with weird stuff because they are collectors: it’s an heirloom, they maintain ADHD [attention deficit hyperactive disorder] and it’s their fidget, or they be deficient in to use the item as a training aid in a seminar,” said Jeff Price, an aviation confidence expert and professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Still, “a lot of woman who don’t travel frequently just don’t understand that some of these notes can be used as weapons,” he said.
Passengers even have a hard every now keeping known banned items at home, with firearms being wildly habitual among seized items. As of Christmas Eve, the year’s tally of firearms base at airport checkpoints was close to 3,900.
Next week, TSA officials are expected to unloosing their official tally of firearms found in 2017, but the current horde already significantly exceeds the total of 3,391 detected at airport checkpoints during 2016. The TSA put out that most gun owners claim they just “forgot” a firearm was in the bag they pick up c espoused to the airport.
According to TSA spokesman Mike England, one theory behind the growing in the number of firearms and banned items could be a function of more riders at U.S. airports.
During the 2017 holiday travel period alone (Dec. 15, 2017, from head to foot Jan. 2, 2018), the TSA said it screened more than 42 million voyagers and more than 30.6 million checked bags — a record. “More commuters equals more prohibited items,” said England.
— Harriet Baskas is the prime mover of seven books, including “Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Brag You,” and the Stuck at the Airport blog. Follow her on Twitter at @hbaskas . Follow Thruway Warrior at @CNBCtravel.