Am I allowed to bring 5 bottles of 3 oz each? Will TSA throw it away?

If they fit into the plastic bag, you'll be fine.

Thanks...

I had to read TSA website again. I had to laugh when they stated.."We have also taken steps to ensure the security boarding areas after you pass through our security checkpoints. Therefore, any liquid, gel, or aerosol purchased (such as coffee or soda) in the secure area after you process through a security checkpoint is allowed aboard your plane".

What does it make any difference??? We are not allowed to bring a can of soda BUT after we go thru security checkpoint, we are allowed to have a can of soda (that's if you buy it at the store somewhere in the terminal). How dumb is that???? I am so sick of this sh** rule....

Discussed ad-nauseum in this forum. The TSA doesn't check the contents, they can't.

This is why I speak with my wallet. After the liquid nonsense was implemented, I stopped purchasing items at any airport.

The rationale is that it forces you limit the overall amount of liquids you can bring and all of the liquids are visible by the screening staff. How it is implemented is fairly sensible. Whether it accomplishes anything is a rather hot topic on here.

pfffttttt

A rational rationale would be effective. Since I can take as many trips through security as I wish and accumulate the liquids at some place in the "sterile" area, there is no point to the circus... it's just another silly annoyance, with exceptions too numerous to mention that lessen its effectiveness still further. If a limit to liquids carried to the sterile area were really necessary, this implementation would clearly be highly ineffective. But it's obviously unnecessary, so the ineffectiveness of the implementation is moot.

I heard that TSA was going to relax the 3 oz liquid rule in 2009, but have not seen anything on when. Does anyone have any information on this?

Well, there is some method to that madness.

Sure, you could take multiple trips through security in order to accumulate liquids on the sterile side. But the more trips you make, the more times you submit yourself to TSA screening, which increases (slightly) the probability that someone will discover that you're up to no good. The efforts you would need to go through in order to avoid detection on multiple trips provide more opportunities for you to screw-up and reveal your true intentions.

As to how much the chance of detection actually increases in this scenario, and whether that increase is worth the overall hassle and expense of enforcing the 100-1-1 rule, I'll leave that to others far wiser than I to decide. But a minimal increase in detection is still an increase.

Here's the funny part:

At LGA last weekend, I was exiting the secure area and saw a TSA guy and a beverage delivery contractor at a closed x-ray machine. The delivery guy was running his crates of Pepsi drinks through the x-ray machine while the TSO watched the screen. Apparently, all merchandise sold post-security must be screened.

But then why can't we just bring it through ourselves? Are we so much less trustworthy than Mr. Joe Beverage Delivery Supply?


I suppose it's possible that they might loosen the liquid restrictions at some point. But for me, the highest priority is getting rid of the SHOE CARNIVAL!

TSA rules, like government agencies and taxes, are virtually impossible to eliminate. Why? Because there is an inbred fear that eliminating a rule that was claimed to "make us safer" would 1) be an admission that said rule was unnecessary, 2) in the eyes of TSA management provide a risk that something might happen and they'd get blamed, and 3) lose yet another justification for reducing the budget.

Consider, if you will, how long the charade of asking whether you packed your own bag went on. It was only eliminated when TSA started screening checked bags (at higher headcount).

You think TSA, at a larger airport with multiple entry points, would notice or act on, multiple trips by 1 pax through security? Yeah, sure and while you're pondering, the smarter terrorists have switched to solid, plastic or powdered.
You're proclaiming an increase in what, exactly? Discovery that I got #trips x ~500 mls of binary, still to be manufactured explosives, into the secure area? Two of us could get 1 liter of ready to go liquid explosive past with just the current rules.

I would submit that its patently obvious the liquid carnival decreases security (making the wild assumption that TSA is capable of providing any security at all). Smurfs are focused on finding liquids with the associated overwhelming ratio of false positive hits. If the smurfs and the smurfs' policy makers focused on explosives of all varieties, instead of obsessing over a specific state of matter, which may or may not be explosive, they would have a better chance of intercepting actual explosives.

If a plane is brought down by on board explosives, the physical state of the responsible explosives will not matter one whit.

Let's be clear; I mostly agree with you.

But the pure mathematics of the situation does imply a slight increase in discovery. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there's a 1/10000 chance of discovering that someone's 100ml bottles contain an explosive during a single screening event. If a Real Terrorist(TM) has to make five separate trips through security in order to get enough liquid through, the chance that they'll get through successfully is 1-((9999/10000)^5) = 5/10000. Yippee! We just increased security by a factor of five!

Now, if you want to argue about whether my 1/10000 ratio is an accurate estimate, or whether the increase in detection to 5/10000 is worth all the hassle, expense, and diversion from other screening activities, that's a perfectly reasonable discussion. All I'm saying is that the pure mathematics behind the scenario does imply a provable increase in security.

Also, my argument assumes that each screening event is completely independent, and that the Real Terrorist(TM) doesn't give any indication that they're going through screening multiple times. If they blow the secret, the chance of detection should increase appropriately. Sure, with a little bit of effort, this level of deception shouldn't be hard to achieve (print multiple boarding passes, use different checkpoints, etc.). But LEOs catch criminals all the time based solely on their stupidity.