I accidentally carried a knife on a plane for 3 years 

We all knew where we were 6 years ago. The airline experience has changed much since then. Has it gotten better? Well, there haven’t been any major attacks since.

My most recent trip to Toronto led me to believe that airport security hasn’t been as tight as I would have thought.

In December 2003, I received a swiss army knife as a Christmas present. For four months, the knife was given healthy attention opening boxes, screwing together computer parts. After my internship at Amazon in 2004, the knife went missing. I searched everywhere for a long time and I only recently found it on my trip from Seattle to Toronto this past June. Actually, I lied a bit, airport security found it.

On a stop over in Boston, I had to change airlines and enter a different section of the airport. That meant going through security again. I was hand carrying two laptops which you have to take out of your bag before security. In my travel daze, I forgot to take out the second laptop. That prompted security to analyze my hand carry further. After taking everything out of the bag and passing the bag through x-ray 3 times, they eventually found my missing swiss army knife. It was in one of those hidden, mini pockets.
Of course, I couldn’t bring the knife with me and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of shipping it, so they had to confiscate it. As a consolation, they offered me the carrying case. No thanks.

There are a few things that are scary about the situation.

  1. The swiss army knife had 3 or4 potentially harmful weapons.
  2. The knife was hidden from security easily and by accident.
  3. I’ve gone through airport security over 20 times with the knife hidden in my hand carry. Airport security locations include Toronto, Seattle, Boston, Utah, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Charlotte.

Perhaps a swiss army knife is difficult to spot in x-ray and perhaps I look innocent enough that security guards dismiss my bags.

Who knows? The only reason it was found was because of an exception. Hopefully someone more devious doesn’t get away with such a thing.

I fly again on Sunday.

Happy flying I guess.