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Air travel can be a major pain in the overhead bin, and few places in the airport are more frustrating than an airport security checkpoint. Fortunately, there are things you can do to make the experience move a little more quickly for yourself and everyone behind you, and it all starts before you set foot in the airport.
Don’t pack a batarang or a bat’leth in your carry-on luggage.
Unfortunately, some air travelers failed to heed this simple warning. In 2015, the US Transportation Safety Administration prevented passengers from carrying both items in carry-on luggage, according to a blog post on the TSA’s official website.
These are just a handful of the batarangs the Transportation Safety Administration says it took from people trying to board planes in 2015.
Transportation Safety Administration
The TSA included these strange revelations as part its annual airport security report. The items that security screeners found in passengers’ carry-on luggage included the expected stuff, such as 2,653 firearms, a 20 percent jump from 2014.
But the TSA also listed some of the odder goods passengers tried to bring on a plane, along with photos of the confiscated items. Star Trek fans should recognize one of them as a bat’leth, the Klingon “sword of honor,” as StarTrek.com puts it. The TSA post says officials found the replica weapon sometime during the last week of April in a carry-on bag at San Juan Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.
Security personnel also confiscated an alarming number of batarangs, the bat-shaped shurikens used by Batman to incapacitate the minions of Gotham City’s greatest supervillains. So either TSA officials aren’t aware that Batman has a code never to kill his enemies or they all work for The Joker.
Related links
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- City councilman pens resignation letter in Klingon
These weapons may be replicas, but they still fall under the TSA’s list of prohibited items. The TSA’s official website says both of these items can be kept in a checked bag but not in a carry-on.
The website also notes that toy guns are permitted in checked bags only. Levi Zilka, 5, learned that the hard way in November of 2015 when TSA agents took away his Buzz Lightyear “Flip Grip” gun as he carried it through a checkpoint at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to the New York Daily News. The TSA later returned the toy to the 5-year-old boy along with a written apology.
Now I understand why Batman and Buzz Lightyear have their own private planes. They must get tired of being asked to step out of line and “assume the position.”
