Here is what happened last week. I had sent an email to TSA earlier in the week asking what the policy was. I told them that I was traveling on Thursday morning, I finally received a reply on Thursday evening after I had arrived at home. I'll give you the gist of the message at the end of this note.

I arrived very early at BOS for a 6:50 am flight. I had the urn in a backpack and placed it on the belt. The urn was metal so it showed up as black. The screener asked for a check and the TSA agent who picked it up asked me if it was an urn and assured me that he would treat it gently. He ran a chemical trace on it and then sent me on my way.

We were late into DFW due to an hour mechanical delay in BOS. We arrived at A12 and my IAH flight was scheduled to leave in 2 minutes from C31. The gate agent at A12 had to be one of the snottiest agents I have run across in a long time. She told me that I had already been rebooked on a flight 2.5 hours later. When I tried to ask her about rebooking on another airline, she told me I had to talk to a ticket agent out front. I was trying to make it home so we could leave immediately and drive to 7 hours to where we would hold the memorial. Since I had over 2 hours I decided to go talk to the ticket agent.

This is where the adventure began. With the flight cutbacks there were no other flights for a couple of hours (where is SWA when you need them). I had to go over to Terminal B for my flight and when I tried to pass through security with the urn TSA would not let me through. They said if they could not see through the object they would not allow it on the plane, neither carry on or checked. I told them what BOS had done, but they would not have a part of that. A TSA agent walked me over to the AA ticket counter and asked for the AA GSE(?). The AA agent called her supervisor who called the TSA supervisor. We all huddled together (you should have seen the people giving us a wide berth) and the TSA supervisor told the agents to put the urn on the belt, he wanted to see what it looked like, he told me to go through security, he wanted to talk to me. On the other side, they asked for the cremation and death certificates. After running another chemical check the supervisor sent me on my way. Boy, did I thank some people there (except the agent at A12).

Now, my communication via the TSA website. I searched for cremation and urn, but got no hits so I sent a note. About 24 hours too late I got a note back essentially telling me that the information was on their site and if I had bothered to look I would know their policies. The person who replied did condesend to post a url http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?co...000519800a0d3b. This points to crematory containers under the topic of transporting the deceased. I would urge anybody who has to perform the task I did to read this, it might have saved me some heart ache in DFW.

My advice, do not transport cremains in a metal container, you can purchase a metal container from a funeral home at your destination. If you do have a metal urn, most modern ones are not sealed and the ashes are in a sealed clear plastic bag. You can open it and let TSA view inside if necessary. By the way, I talked to a UPS Store about their policy and the manager told me that they would not ship the cremains. Talk to your funeral director about the best way to ship the cremains if necessary.