Agreed.. It should go back to the pre-911 days.

Add to that knives are already available with meal service in F (many airlines are bringing back metal knives) and it shows that the knife ban is ridiculous.

Super

Like having 250 serrated metal knives for about 50 persons in business class on a TATL flight?

Passed through SEA security Saturday morning with my wife and son. We each have an identical TSA-spec Ziploc in our similar-sized carryons. But as the SEA screeners haven't been asking for them to be pulled out and sent through separately of late, I told wife & son not to bother.

The three bags go through the X-ray all in a row. Screener reacts to nothing in wife's bag and son's bag. When she gets to mine, everything stops and I get a lecture about how I'd better take my Ziploc out of my bag and send it through separately next time, or else it would be confiscated without discussion.

Only if you spot it, you idiots.

You're clearly overqualified. Your bosses (Kip and Chertoff) are idiots and you're not, so if they find out that you're using logic and common sense and reasonable risk evaluation, you're toast.

At which point pretty much all TSA screeners will be out jobs, because the airlines will all go bankrupt when no one flies any more.

The problem is when screeners are required to go after silly items (pocket knives, lighters, liquids) which pose little to no threat... and thus become blinded to the real security concerns, as red teaming has shown at many of the airports so tested. When screeners are catching the water but missing the weapons and bomb components in the same bag, there is something very wrong.

^^^

To further illustrate Bear's point, I decided to use a KHIA baggie for some small liquids I purchased for my wife in Canada. I put it in an outside pocket of my carry-on, and promptly forgot about it. The X-ray tech at YYZ spotted something, so they "searched" and swabbed my bags, but didn't open the outside pocket, and no one ever saw the KHIA baggie. When I got home, I found the baggie and realized what had prompted the useless search.

This sort of security is a huge waste of my tax dollars, as it combines high cost with low effectiveness. If it was low cost, low effectiveness, maybe OK, or if it was high cost, high effectiveness, maybe OK. As currently configured and staffed, however, it is the worst of both worlds.