You heard it hear first!

Could you be a little bit more specific, if its not SSI?

Uh-huh.

In the next 45 days you may be surprised. There are other things coming too. I saw a pre-press release that said TBD on it.

Too much to hope for, but I'm looking forward to returning to work today (just got off of a two-day break) to find out for myself. Of course, this would be typical government bureaucracy: end the pointy object search but get wrapped around the axle over lighters and matches.

Oh well, as a good friend of mine once said when we found ourselves in the middle of a minefield, "one step at a time."

I heard last night that TSA in EWR and one of the other NY airports is going to begin to provide envelopes so the passengers can mail their prohibited items home. If that's the change that's coming, it's really no change.

And truthfully, I wondered how many of the mailed items would, in fact, make it back to the passengers's home and not disappear.

If you're referring to the kiosks where you can mail the prohibited items back to yourself?

That was on CNN's midday show Live From on Monday.

Great. The Post Office will make more money.

TSA will probably want a cut for sending them the extra business.

I thought that they had sealed all of the airside mailboxes, so we'll have to leave the queue and find one, and then get back in line????

I'll believe the pointy end object search is over when I'm allowed to take a machete onboard a plane. Until then, y'all are just trying to drum up business for some private business and/or public agency that can ship this stuff "home".

This raises another question. What about those wonderful civil fines that supplement the local budget? If you let people in with pointy objects, how will you make up for the loss in fines? Layoffs? Doubtful. Make up stupid laws and rules like the lighter ban? Possible.

Despite media panic/hype, many airports still have airside mailboxes or even airside post offices. ORD, DEN, PDX, and SEA are good examples.

Airports that don't have mailboxes ususally have extremely paranoid management, idiot FSDs, etc. LAX and SFO are examples. I once asked an airside information desk at SFO where I could find a mailbox, and he told me (in poor English), "All mailboxes are removed. somone could put BOMB in mailbox and blow things up." (said while waving his hands in explosion gesture) If I'd said "bomb" and made that gesture at the same time, I probably would have been arrested. SFO, by the way, is so stupidly paranoid that they moved the mailboxes outside the terminal building. But still on the same side of the street as the terminal building, so little real difference. I guess it's OK to blow up all the curbisde pax but not those at the actual ticket counter.

Of course, the safest place for a mailbox is airside, where all contents deposited in it will have been screened. But some of these idiots don't seem to realize that.

Oops!!! Moderator error folks

I meant to reply to this post, not edit it. I am truly, truly embarrased and am sincerely sorry to FTer eyecue. I'll alert the webmeisters to see if they can recover the original verbiage. -- essxjay, who today is in nimrod mode ...

SEA has no airside mailbox or facility to mail. You must be escorted out with the TSA screener holding the prohib until you are clear the exit. At that time there is a blue box that a PRIVATE company allows you to mail your item home for around $6.

Sheesh I wish I would have thought of that. I would be rich!

We have the same thing at SAT T1. It's actually a business center-credit union that offers a variety of services. One of those includes mailing services. We are under no obligation to inform passengers of this service; the bottom line is that it is a personal responsibility to find a way to get rid of a prohibited item. We inform the passengers of the availability of this mailing service strictly as a courtesy. I remind them that this is a private enterprise not affiliated with the government, and this is one of the options available to them to properly dispose prohibited items.

And kudos to you Bart for doing that. I wish there were more TSAers with your tact.