Originally Posted by
jcaplins
In the pre- 9/11 days, when you were allowed to escort your family and friends to the gate to wish them farewell:
2 stories:
My grandmother sent her purse through the X-ray machine and the guy showed us the monitor, pointed, and asked "what's this? can I look in your bag?"
What we saw looked exactly like the silhouette of cartoon ACME bomb.
Turns out it was a makeup compact and a piece of yarn.
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During college, I was in an electronics/programming class and had to build a digital clock. This involved a breadboard (look it up), a bunch of 7-segment displays, a CPU, and a lot of wire. My friends project was stuffed into a fishing tackle box and he was taking it on a trip home with him as carry-on. If anything looked like a time-detonated device, this was it.
He told the security guy, "you're gonna want to hand check this". Security's response: "OK, have a nice trip."
The good old days.
No kidding
In '89 I took my Officer's Sword on the flight back home.
Sometime in 99-01 - I missed one flight and they rushed me to another, but I had to get my bag to the gate for gate check they said. At security I askedf to talk to the supervisor. I told him that I had military flight gear with me and there was a survival knife in the vest. He escorted me to the gate, checked the bag and that was the end of it!
USMCFLYR