A SmartSign Store

TSA considers allowing knives on planes

April 30, 2013

line of people for the security checkpoint at Denver International Airport.

The security checkpoint line at Denver International Airport. Image by oddharmonic, used under a Creative Commons license.

Ever since 9/11, the shoe bomber, the liquids bomber and the underwear bomber, air travel has been a cumbersome affair. We arrive early, occasionally have our luggage swabbed for traces of ballistic material, stumble through the security line, pulling out laptops and Ziploc baggies of toiletries, as we tug off sneakers all the while tripping over laces and worrying that we’re not going fast enough for the watch-checking businessman behind us. We take off our shoes and dump out our water; we certainly to not expect the TSA to permit knives on planes.

On March 5, 2013, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) decided it was time to ease up on some very specific security restrictions by allowing more items past security and onto to airplanes, including knives less that 2.36 inches long, golf clubs, hockey sticks and ski poles.

In at time of reinforced cockpit doors, plain-clothes, gun-carrying air marshals and passengers willing to get involved to prevent a terrorist from taking control of an airplane and turning it into a missile, the TSA argued that these sporting goods and pocket knives were of no threat and only served to slow down security checkpoint lines and divert efforts from more credible terrorist threats.

Flight attendants, pilots, federal air marshals and even insurance companies, begged to differ.

Flight attendants, air marshals, and insurance providers all protested the possibility of permitting knives on board. Photo by intellax.

In an environment where most everyone is some combination of sleepy, annoyed, indignant, stressed out or late, there are some 10,000 cases of air rage each year. While these passengers driven to act like psychos may not count as terrorists, those working the front lines of air travel don’t want to see them armed. After all, one man’s sporting equipment is another man’s bludgeoning tool, and while a pocket knife may have spent it’s entire off-board life whittling baby elephants and playing mumblety peg, it takes no imagination to see how a raging passenger can unfold even a small knife and really ruin a stewardess’ day.

The Flight Attendants Union Coalition launched an education campaign and circulated a petition which garnered 9,300 signatures. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents air marshals, lodged public complaints. The Coalition of Airline Pilot Associations announced that they did not want knives of any kind on board any airplane. (Highlighting the absurdity of allowing pocket knives, while the rest of us are left to slice at soggy airplane ham with the blunted edge of a plastic spoon.)

On top of all that, a nationwide survey by the Travel Leaders Group found that 74 percent of those polled said they were against allowing knives on planes.

On April 22, just two days before the new policy was to be implemented, the TSA announced that they would delay allowing knives onto planes, with no clear timetable as to when — or whether — they would ever enact the plan.