Originally Posted by
PhlyingRPh
I think you have an excellent and well organized system in place. Just be cautious with poultry and fish items in the summertime.
I am curious about one thing though. Why do you even stop to talk to the checkpoint gatekeepers (described above)? They are nobody's and are about as useful as t1ts on a bull. Stopping for them can only lead to extended arguments, and at that point in the process you need your energy to fight with real TSO's.
Never carry fish with us, the collapsible cooler we use is insulated and with the bag of ice, it keeps the food at near refrigerator temperature. From the time we leave our house to when we get past to security is about 1 hour so the bag of ice in the zip lock bag hardly has started to melt. As soon as we get past security we replace the ice we dumped before security in the Sky Club, or at a vendor, so at most it is no more than 15 minutes our food is without ice.
As far as the gate checkers, we meet all the carry-on regulations, so I would rather not start any commotion. If they just ask, I tell them it is a bistro sized food bag, which we are allowed to carry on, and then they let us pass.
Never once have they insisted we open the bag and if they ask me to open the bag, at that point I would probably tell them they are exceeding their authority, to the best of my knowledge, gate checkers do not have the authority to inspect carry on items.
We carry our food bag with us almost all the time and even the FA’s when boarding have never questioned us about it. Sometimes when on the road we stop at a Subway or Quiznos and pick up sandwiches on the way back to the airport.
Mr. Elliott