This Christmas tree is so fucking metal

I’ve got one, which I bought in Norway 7 years ago. If I bring it back I might as well stop en route in Newcastle and drop off some coal.

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If you get off the plane holding it like a torch and shout Enige og tro inntil Dovre faller you’ll get to skip the line at the passport control point and someone will fetch your luggage from the carousel for you.

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My hat is off to you. Proper research trumps a wild surmise every time.

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Here in the USA, they are still completely and utterly illegal, and I have successfully taken a Swiss Army Knife through airport security multiple times. Generally discovered when I am rummaging around my backpack at my location…

I’ve had completely nonthreatening, non-pointy kitchen implements like a Y-shaped peeler confiscated by the TSA when I got them for Christmas and tried to take them in carry-on luggage, not thinking there was any way they would assume they could be a weapon. They offer the option to Fedex it to yourself, typically, but $20 to send myself a $5 peeler isn’t worth it.

Do they allow you to go back and check it?

At that point, bags have already been checked; you could theoretically go back, ask for your bags to be retrieved, put the peeler (or whatever) in there IF they can even get it for you, re-check it, then go through the TSA line all over again, but I’ve never had that kind of spare time in an airport.

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The time I had something that they wouldn’t let on, they gave me a box about the size of a Chinese take out and checked it in. It did make it to the carousel.

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Absolutely, but my experience included the checkpoint guy holding it against the Official Knife Blade Length Measuring Ruler, and saying “Very good, have a nice flight, sir”.

(I agree about serendipitously finding sharp or pointy things in one’s carry-on luggage only after one has reached one’s destination. Happened to me more than once, too. In any case, tiger-team experiments suggest that TSA agents regularly miss even bigger and more obviously contraband items such as handguns.)

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I do IT for the local offices (town and airport) of an international airline. I realize that this post was about things that got seized at security, so this is slightly tangential, but… The airport office is packed full of things that people tried to check in but that CANNOT go on a commercial airplane, checked or otherwise; in particular, I’ve seen well over two dozen sets of gas-filled shock absorbers.

I know, I know - the likelihood of one of those failing catastrophically in the cargo hold is pretty low (although the greater pressure differential makes it less unlikely), but the potential damage if it did happen makes my flesh creep. Who the hell would want to pack those things in his luggage and then FLY with them? I mean, sure, send them home with your cousin you never liked anyway…

More closely TSA-related, however - at least two of their passengers have tried to board with sword canes, which is pretty badass. I’d never actually seen a real-life sword cane before that.

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