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Leave Your Home Safe Checklists
Packing Tips
Dollars and Sense
Health and Safety
Your Special Needs
Ticket Vocabulary
Ticket Information
Documented to Travel
Airport Arrivals
At the Gate
Your Luggage and Security
Rental Car Tips
Hotel Tips
Cruise Line Tips |
Check with the airline about anything you’re not sure about checking through or carrying on. Some items can only be shipped via air cargo. Always follow the airline’s guidelines.
Some items are verboten under new airport security rules and federal laws. To avoid heavy fines and prison time, declare any hazardous materials. Here are some tips:
* Not only will you have to bring your laptop on board, you may also have to demonstrate that it works. Check your batteries. This also applies to any other electronic devices you plan to carry-on, such as video cameras. Ask for a manual inspection to ensure no damage will occur.
* Leave your mace key chain, your lighter and lighter fuel, knives, cutting instruments of any kind, nail files, razors, and even corkscrews. All of these have been confiscated. Pack them in your check-in luggage. In other words, anything that could possible be used as a weapon is not allowed onboard.
* Either ship wrapped packages or leave the items unwrapped. Security will open them anyway and you’ll have to wrap them all over again. Plus, it’ll slow you down.
* Not even fake guns or weapons can be carried on board. Pack them in your luggage and check them through.
* Airlines publish a list of hazardous materials. Check your items against this list, even innocuous items at home become hazardous during air transport. Changes in temperature and pressure can cause items to leak, generate toxic fumes or start a fire.
Materials Considered Hazardous by the Airlines
* Flammable liquids, such as fuel, paints, paint-thinners and cleaners, lighter fluid, butane fuel, lighters with flammable liquid reservoirs
* Flammable solids, such as fireworks, signal flares, sparklers, ammunition, gun powder and other explosives, “strike-anywhere” matches
* Bleach, drain cleaners, solvents, corrosives and oxidizers
* Pressurized containers, such as hair spray, deodorant or repellents
* Recreational items, such as scuba tanks, propane tanks, CO2 cartridges, self-inflating rafts, and camping equipment with fuel
* Gas-powered tools, dry ice, wet-cell batteries, oxygen tanks, radioactive materials and infectious substances
* Once again, any item that could be used as a weapon, including but not limited to firearms, mace, tear gas, pepper spray, knifes, cutting instruments.
* Some unloaded real guns may be allowed in checked baggage only, providing the guns are locked in protective cases. Ask the airline about their policies regarding packed guns and what the laws area about carrying a gun to the airport and into your destination. Also, check about boxed small arms ammunition for personal use packed in your checked luggage.
* Perfume and some other personal hygiene materials, while hazardous, may be carried on board, but there are limitations: no more than 16 oz per container and no more than 70 oz. total.
* Dry ice, usually four pounds or less, for packing perishable may be carried on board if the package is vented.
* If you’ve drained your scuba tank to a low amount of PSI compression, you may be allowed to bring it onboard.
* While electric wheelchairs may be able to be accommodated on board, the battery may need to be disconnected and removed, and the terminals insulated to prevent short circuits.
* If you need supplemental or medical oxygen, most airlines provide it, but you may need a note from your doctor and advanced notice for “in-flight use only,” but few provide oxygen at ground locations. Once again, check with your airline.
Keeping an Eye on Your Luggage
* With the millions of people flying, accept that yours is not the only luggage in that style. Because of the similarities, someone could accidentally pick up your bag by mistake.
* Believe it or not, there are professional thieves who work the airports, just waiting for a turned head, to steal luggage.
* If you left your luggage unattended let the security person know so. You could be used as a dupe with someone putting contraband in your luggage, or a terrorist may place a device in it.
* If you left your bag unattended at anytime, tell the airline official when he asks. Security will probably take the time to search your bags, or, in the interest of safety, refuse to allow your bags on the plane. Although some of the questions you’ll be asked – “Did you pack your own luggage?” “Did you leave your luggage unattended at any time?” “Are you carrying any hazardous materials? – may seem ridiculous to law-abiding citizens, but you’re asked these questions to find dangerous items that may have been slipped into your luggage.
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