NW Pilot Enraged Over Confiscation

A Northwest Airlines pilot became enraged after airport security confiscated his fingernail clippers and scissors, according to police and airport officials who witnessed the incident.

Police intervened, and the incident was being reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But no charges were filed against the pilot, whom Northwest declined to identify Thursday. The flight to Minneapolis left Rapid City Regional Airport on schedule Wednesday with the pilot at the controls.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010927/aponline201547_000.htm

I hear they've been checking and double checking flight crews at security checkpoints...

I don't get it. As idiotic as the new rules are, they aren't exactly keeping it hidden from anyone. The pilot should have known better and even if he hadn't, should have been more professional. Nothing like an irate pilot to calm people's nerves.

I am mad about this. (the rule that is).

It is stupid. And I bet I could find that 20% of the people on the plane have at least one of these items, or something worse.

Now you have crews that do not check their baggage, and therefore might have a need to carry these items being forced to put up with stupid rules.

Read this again - stupid rules. Do not think this is safety.

I agree that it's pretty stupid. The security emphasis with aircrew members should be concerned with identification -- making sure these people are who they say they are. It's not about nail clippers. These people are at the controls of the aircraft, after all. Let's THINK a little, folks!

Let's see, we're taking away the pilot's fingernail clippers and sc1ssors, but soon they might be allowed to have guns??

I have a co-worker who ran into the same problem. After she got past security, she just walked over to the gift shop and bought a new fingernail clipper. This is bull anyway. If anyone would ever try to use a fingernail clipper as a weapon on me, I would be more likely to be injured in a fit of laughter. They better start taking our pens and pencils away from us too. If I'm in a fight to the death, and I have first pick of weapons from a pen and a fingernail clipper, I'm going with the pen!!!

My belt could be used as a weapon. It has a metal end. But the "spirit" of the new rules seem livable - but I'd rather like to not have to hold my pants up with one hand while shaving with a piece of sandpaper http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

As I see it there are 2 seperate issues here.

The first is the idiotic FAA rules, remember these are the idiots that decided to allow knives(blade less than 4 inches) and box cutters on plane in the first place.
Jane Garvey must be smoking and inhailing.
Banning nail clippers and nail files is plain silly, but what do you expect from the FAA? Brilliance, not likely.

The 2nd issue is the behavior of the pilot. For heaven sake, we just had 6000+ people killed less than 3 weeks ago, due in large part(ok this is my opinion not fact) to poor airport security. The rules have been posted clearly, they are on the FAA website among other places. The rules is pretty clear:

"No knives or cutting instruments of any size or material will be allowed in the aircraft cabin"

Since a nail clipper's purpose is to cut fingernails, it is banned.

The pilot should have known the rules, no reason for an outburst.

As a former NWA flight attendant. I think for crew members this is hard. I use to commute as many pilots an flight attendants do. I would be gone for 8-12 days at a time. I would need items such as nail clippers and razors and things like that. It's insane to think to have to buy these in every city. As a flight attendant I didn't make enough money to do this. As said earlier it's not like crew members have the option of checking their bags so we could brings these items along with us. I don't think the pilot should have caused a scene, but as the same time. I think crew memembers should make a stink to the FAA, because to expect them to do their jobs and not have basic grooming utensils is pretty lame.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by umguy:
...it's not like crew members have the option of checking their bags so we could brings these items along with us.</font>

You could gate-check the bags so they're available at the end of the jetway when you deplane. As a crew member, you're going to be the last one(s) off the flight anyway, so the wait for ground crew to get your bag to the jetway shouldn't be a problem.

Hard to gate check those clippers if you can't get the clippers past security.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by happymob:
Hard to gate check those clippers if you can't get the clippers past security.</font>

...but I'd bet if you got a blue 'gate check' tag on the bag and sent it down with the rest of the checked baggage, the ground crew would return it to you at the gate....

Standby4321 hit the nail on the head. Positive identification of the crewmembers is the most important thing. Once that is accomplished, all this extra searching of crewmembers is a big waste of time that could be better directed elsewhere. Let's face it, once a pilot is at the controls you have to trust that he/she wants to get to the destination safely as badly as you do. Whether or not a pilot has fingernail clippers has NO BEARING as to the safe outcome of a flight.

The current fiasco eith the US pilot taken into police custody this Sunday after he made ``inappropriate'' comments at an airport security checkpoint

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum109/HTML/003590.html

caused me to wonder what ever became of this situation. Anybody know anything by chance? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/confused.gif