Teddy Bear Abandoned at LAX Security Checkpoint
 

Will this be on next week's "good catch" list?


TSA took somebody's large teddy bear.

The 12/14 article has gone missing.

Replaced with the Teddy Bear article hitting the news, byline 12/15.

CNN Money:

I don't understand this at all.

Though the stuffed bear was quite large, it was smaller than a human being, and human beings are screened by the millions each day.

It appears to be too large to fit in the carry-on x-ray scanner. However, there are protocols for screening items which can't be x-rayed, such as photographic film.

The bear could easily - and quickly - have been screened by the same means used to screen human beings and medical assistive devices: WTMD combined with ETD swabbing, followed by vigorous hands-on groping.

But instead, the TSOs chose to take the lazy way out. "It's weird, so it's prohibited."

And Saddington Bear gets left by a trash can in an airport. Maybe Tom Hanks can make a movie about this one...

According to its owner, YouTuber Jake Paul, the teddy bear is 9' tall.

Here is his video of the "incident":

And a lot more details in this Daily Breeze article:

They sell those bears at CostCo. The thing is actually bigger than it looks in the first picture. My son was fooling around with one in the store last week and from seeing it up close I can tell you it wouldn't fit in most cars in a passenger seat, so I doubt you could cram one into a plane seat.

Rather rotten of the YouTuber to just abandon it.

Is that store-sold stuffed animal bigger than the late "Andre the Giant"? He fit in airplane passenger seats. He cleared airport security screening checkpoints.

Here he is:

http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/r...anandrecq7.jpg

The giant teddy bear had a ticketed seat, according to some articles. Doesn't the "9 foot teddy" get shipped in boxes whose biggest dimension is smaller than 9 feet? Compressing a stuffed animal isn't all that hard to do, and in some ways it easier to do than to try to compress a newly cut Christmas tree if unfamiliar with the methods to make it simple.

Even when not compressed, this teddy bear would perhaps cause me less discomfort if it spilled over into my seat too than what has happened to me from some "people of size" spilling over into my seat space.

Response from the TSA Blog:

http://blog.tsa.gov/2016/12/tsa-myth...-officers.html

Teddy bears can be dangerous, in that they can be used to conceal dangerous items -- something too many children in current and/or former conflict zones have realized. But the TSA can screen teddy bears -- even oversized ones -- in a way that ordinary children cannot.

Sorry but don't believe you- I has seen many passengers bigger fit in seats! Usually a seat and a half....

He doesn't have any body odor, talk, ask to have you buy them a drink, bother the FA's, get up to go to the bathroom. I think he would a better seat mate than many others.

I hope they find him a good home. It would be a shame to be stuck at the airport for the rest of his life.

1. Andre the Giant died in 1993. You might not have noticed, but unless the bear had a ticket in first class, the space available in which to cram the bear is noticeably less than the space of a 1993 flight.

2. the bear is 9 feet, Andre was only 7.

The bears arrive at CostCo in boxes about the size of a large refrigerator. Several have been crammed in each box and when the straps around the box are cut, they pop open with a fair bit of force. Actually compressing a stuffed animal and keeping it compressed requires equipment that wouldn't make it past the TSA, especially when you consider that the equipment would need to be larger than a checked bag, and no article I saw mentioned that the YouTuber had such equipment, but feel free to make up whatever you like.

You're claiming you've seen passengers more than 9 feet tall and 3 feet wide at the shoulder fit in airline seats? :roll eyes: Does the Guinness Book of Records know about them?

1. You might not have noticed, but I already noted that Andre the Giant was dead. The word "late" means something. ;)

2. The seated teddy bear is not 9 feet tall. Perhaps the stretched out bear is 9 feet tall. The giant Costco teddy bear can be squeezed into a typical fully upright lawn chair.

I would find this teddy bear in my neighboring plane seat on a 3-3 seat or bigger plane to be less problematic for my flight than some of the "people of size" I've had next to me on wide-body flights. A "9 ft" giant teddy bear makes for a more easily compressible and better body pillow than a "person of size".

Without a machine, I'm pretty sure I could stuff this teddy bear into a container that is well less than 6 feet on each of its L/H/W dimensions.

It's a moot point.

The airline has checked baggage dimension limits too. Is that Delta statement a moot point too?

IIRC, DL policies are published to limit oversized checked luggage, on flights within the US, to be no more than 80 linear inches in its dimensions.

According to multiple sources, including a couple linked upthread, Delta offered to check the item as luggage regardless of its dimensions.

Can DL even deliver on such offer without running afoul of rules/regulations legally applicable to DL for that flight when it comes to checked luggage?

There is a scene in the video at about 6:50 with the bear and the vlogger walking along ini an alley together. Unless the vlogger is six-foot-six, that bear was not nine feet long. It appeared to me to be about seven feet long. Yes, it was mighty wide, but at seven feet in length, combined with its stuffed and flexible nature, I'm sure it could have fit into an airplane seat next to the vlogger. It would have required some compression with the seat belt, and might have fit better upside-down, but it could have worked.

All that being said, however, I'm not convinced that TSA has any fault here. DL is the entity that prohibited the bear from getting on the plane. TSA was seen in the video at about 3:45 actually screening the bear by passing it through the WTMD.

It rankles me to not pile on the TSA, but in this case, they weren't the jerks.

I hesitate to say that DL was being a jerk in this instance, either. Sure, I think the bear could have fit on the plane, but it's DL's plane, and if they have size limits on carry-on items, even those you buy a seat for, then I can't fault them too much for simply sticking to their policies.

The vlogger, on the other hand, seems to be a professional goofball whose only aim with this stunt was to make a video that got a lot of click-throughs. He fully expected to lose the bear, he said so right at the beginning of the video, so my heart isn't exactly bleeding for the loss of his bear.

Fitting into the seat isn't the only issue at play here. As I understand it, the bear needed to be able to fasten the seat belt using no more than one seat belt extender, and lower the armrest. If either of these could not be accomplished, it should be allowed to purchase another seat, if available, or wait for the next flight.

Correct, that's the rule for a COS, at least on WN. I believe most other carriers have the same or similar rules.

As I said, it shouldn't have been a problem to compress a stuffed bear with the seatbelt and get the armrest down, particularly if the bear were put into the seat upside-down.

I must say, one of the most shocking parts of this entire fiasco is that a seven-foot stuffed bear was abandoned right outside of a TSA c/p, and nobody triggered a panicked stampede a la JFK, or called for a terminal dump. I guess everyone who saw something said nothing.

But if he were upside down, how could he fasten the seat belt so that it was low and tight across his lap? And could he reach the buckle to release the seat belt by lifting the top of the buckle?

And what would happen if cabin pressure changed and an oxygen mask dropped from the panel above him? Would he be able to grasp the mask, extend the tubing to its full length, place the mask over his nose and mouth, and breathe normally, adjusting his own mask before helping others?

There are all sorts of problems associated with upside-down seating.

It's not wider than some of the "people of size" on some of the flights I've taken.

In the event of emergency. You wouldn't need to affix the bears oxygen mask. So there's that.

The humor in this thread is almost unbearable......

In case of an emergency, the teddy bear may need Doc McStuffins. But since the TSA seems to have so many employees who think they know the medical and related special dietary needs of passengers, the teddy bear is in good hands wherever the TSA is on duty. That is until the announcement of "see something, say something" prompts an alert about an unattended teddy bear and they call the bomb disposal team to blow up the teddy bear. RIP, Teddy E. Bear.

I hope I wouldn't be abandoned in an airport, especially LAX

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