After reading another topic under SAS, I thought that non-Danish speaking flyers would be interested in the reason for the partial evacuation in CPH on 10/11.

It seems that a young woman had an egg timer in her suitcase for a trip to London and Los Angeles on BA. to visit her boyfriend.

According to the Danish paper �B.T.� the x-ray of the suitcase caused the airport to call in a bomb squad which found the egg timer. It turns out that the suitcase belonged to a young Danish woman. She explained that it was her friend�s suitcase, which she had borrowed from him when she previously flew home to Denmark. Now it was empty and she did not know the egg timer was in the suitcase.

Despite her explanation, the BA Captain refused to have her onboard . Other passengers were denied boarding as they had the same name �Rasmussen� as the young woman.

It seems as she got onboard a later flight to London.

Fact:
The young woman had done nothing wrong whatsoever.

Fact:

Captain denied her boarding.


Problem:

Yes.

Other than not being aware of the contents of her luggage. Maybe "nothing wrong" but at the very least foolish, especially these days.

Yes but what if she had been aware of the fact that she carried and eggtime. Would that be illegal? Not at all as far as I can tell.

I still fail to see why the woman would be foolish - if she did not know of a bomb in her back THAT would be foolish, but an eggtime???

Are you suggesting she knew for sure the eggtimer she didn't know she had was not a bomb, or what's your point?

I am suggesting that if I go into the airport with say - a baseball - and I don't know I have it, then that is not illegal. Nowhere does the rules say that one must know if one carries an egg timer.

One must know if one carries dangerous stuff because that is not allowed - but clearly what this lady carried was harmless

By the same logic, driving your car while drunk is not a problem as long as nothing happens. Right? But, that's not the point. The point is you shouldn't drink and drive because it increases the risk of something happening.

While I agree that carrying an egg timer is not a crime, I still think it is foolish to fly without knowing what's in your luggage, especially these days. The point being that if you don't know what's in your luggage how can you possibly be sure it's all harmless? I think the girl rose suspicion not because she had an egg timer but because she was clueless about it, spurring the question: what else was she carrying without knowing about it?

How can you possibly find that logic in what I wrote??? Please explain!

I simply wrote that carrying an egg timer is not crime. It happens to be illegal to drive drunk.

I'm talking about the logic used in your argumentation, which is similar. What you are saying is that as long as what you carry in your luggage without knowing about it is harmless it's not a problem. What I'm trying to say is that if you don't know what's in your luggage you cannot possibly know whether it's harmless or not.

Put another way, you look at the outcome in retrospect and conclude that since the item she carried without knowing it was an egg timer it was not a problem. I look at the potential problem and conclude that if she carried an item without knowing it that item might have been a bomb rather than an egg timer and the girl would most likely have been equally clueless.

You are right (like I said already above) that it is not a crime to carry an egg timer. However, I still think it's foolish these days not to know the contents of your luggage.