The Air-Travel-Security-Smarts Bell Curve. Where Do You Fall on the Curve?
Do you travel much by airplane or will travel by plane in the near future? Are you a smart traveler? Read on.
Imagine a normal bell curve. At the right end of the curve are the smart traveling crowd (people like you and me of course) who have no trouble moving effortlessly through airport security lines. Laptop out, shoes off deadly hair gel in a plastic bag we glide through and never hold up the flow of progress.
In the middle of the bell curve are the average travelers who, on occasion forget the 3:1:1 rule, wear lace up shoes or forget the pocket knife that’s on their key chain.
And then there’s the tribe which resides at the left-end tail of the bell curve. How do they decide what to carry-on to the airplane? What logic drives their thought process? If you’ve gone through the rat-run security line at Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport perhaps you’ve seen the “shrine” the authorities have built to honor these travelers. I went through ATL the other day and saw the shrine for the first time, displaying what some tried to bring with them, perhaps even on your flight. A couple of items that caught my eye were the giant cans of aerosol bug killer and the industrial sized highway flares.
But the one that really surprised me, and how many of us have forgotten to take this out of our carry-on luggage, a gasoline powered chainsaw!
“Ok ok.” you say, “We’re not that dumb. We’d never do that.” Well apparently the security people have decided you just might be THAT dumb. The sign on the display reminds us that the items within are prohibited! It’s a good thing they remind us too. You should’ve seen everyone discarding their 12” bar Husqvarnas right along with their 12 fl.oz. of Listerine.
Geesh. Come on! Discard the Listerine for sure. But my chainsaw too?!
Add comment June 8th, 2007
