By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer
Nearly three years after 9/11, only frequent fliers seem to know the new rules of flying
Sarah B., by her own description, shows little modesty. SheÌs also a cynical traveler, given to telling friends, "All this security stuff is just to make stupid people feel secure." The Cincinnati native is, however, just modest enough to request that her last name not be included here.
Accustomed to setting off airport screening devices, Sarah can name half a dozen possible culprits when the magnetometer sounds off: her underwire bra, the wire in her jaw installed after surgery, and various other bits of metal on her clothing, including the tiny metal buttons on her jeans. Even her nipple rings set off screening equipment regularly.
But when a friendly airport screener in Cinci discovered SarahÌs chest seemed unusually reactive to the metal wands, Sarah told the woman the nipple rings were the likely culprits.
"She said, 'WeÌre going to have to check that out,' and I said, 'Are you serious?'"
She was.
Sarah was led behind a screen near the checkpoint, where she pulled her low-cut shirt down and showed the woman her piercings. Sarah says she was more annoyed at the inconvenience than at baring her bust to a stranger.
"After that, she patted me down," Sarah said. "She was behind me and she patted me between my breasts, among other places. It really wasnÌt that big of a deal. It probably would have been very upsetting if I had been anyone else. If I'd been in my regular mood, I would have been highly annoyed."
Seasoned business traveller Ranita Jones was annoyed at a security checkpoint when a metal hairpick, tweezers and an extra butane lighter held her up at the Northern Kentucky airport. She gave the extra lighter to her traveling companion and got it back when theyÌd both cleared the screeners. In 26 years of business travel, Jones has seen her property stay behind at security checkpoints only since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
And like many business travelers, Jones has learned dressing for success is getting more difficult.
"ThereÌs no such thing as dressing for business when you fly anymore," Jones says.
So she doesn't. Underwire bras have been replaced with sports bras. Her jewelry and hair barettes stay packed until she arrives at her destination. In short, she's replaced a business suit with a running suit and leaves little more than travel reading in her purse when she passes through security to avoid having to leave items behind.
Items left by travelers add up.
Transit Security Administration screeners at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Internationa Airport collect an average of 100 pounds of questionable property each week.
"It's every single kind of imaginable jackknife, scissors and, for some reason, an amazing number of kitchen knives and paring knives," says Paul Wisniewski, the airportÌs director of federal security. "Ladies often pack fruit on a trip."
Wisniewski says other items that typically fill up bins of the "voluntarily relenquished" include mini-corkscrews with attached mini-knives, multi-tools of several varieties, throwing stars, billy clubs and kubatons.
And guns.
"By now, this fiscal year, weÌve probably had over 500 guns show up at checkpoints around the country," Wisniewski says. Those guns are not voluntarily relenquished to screeners. Police confiscate them in the inevitable criminal investigation.
Buyer pays shipping
Buddy Peterson travels, usually with his wife and children, about twice a year. Since 9/11, heÌs flown in and out of Chicago twice with a keychain-sized Swiss Army knife and a pair of fold-up pliers. The knife was free. The pliers, a stocking stuffer.
"I dropped my keys in the little bucket and they said I couldnÌt fly with the knife and pliers," Peterson says.
His options: take them back to his car, put them in his checked baggage (which was already on the plane), leave them behind or ship them back to himself through the airportÌs mail-back program.
Peterson chose the final option, took his tools down to the customer service desk and got the needed envelope. At a charge of $6 per item, Peterson dropped the envelope in the nearby mailbox.
"What really chapped my ass, I looked at the envelope when we got home and the shipping charge was a dollar twenty-five," he says. "They make it really easy for you to give them your money."
If Peterson had just given up his items and waited a few weeks, he might have seen them avaiable for purchase on eBay from the Kentucky Division of Surplus Property. He might have even saved some money.
The division's eBay identity, "kysurplus," (feedback rating: 135) gets good reviews for its selling practices. User "gpa-termite" recently purchased a six-inch bone carving with intricately cut silhouettes of camels, and wrote, "oughta be illegal to ship so fast and package so well AAAA ++++ thanks."
All auctions conducted by the division include the requirement buyers pay KentuckyÌs 6 percent sales tax.
Airports in Northern Kentucky, Lexington and Louisville turn over hundreds of pounds of confiscated items as surplus every six weeks.
Louisville airport officials confiscate a fairly large number of souvenir bats from the Louisville Slugger plant.
But the division also collects property from BostonÌs Logan Airport and airports in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla.
Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Finance Cabinet, says the agency recently received a shipment of 4,800 pounds from Logan and picked up 10,000 pounds of prohibited items on the last trip to Florida.
Those items are sorted into dozens of bins when they arrive in Frankfort. Surplus property sells items to other state agencies so they aren't caught paying retail.
Then the non-profit groups pick over the surplus wares.
"Multi-tools are very popular among Boy Scouts," Midkiff said.
And then, finally, the public gets a crack at some excessively sharp (or blunt) items for sale on the web, sometimes 20 identical Swiss Army knives or Leatherman multi-tools will be sold in the same lot for $40.
And adding up the cash seems to be more difficult than you might think.
Midkiff would not provide hard estimates of revenues from the sale of property turned over by fliers, but says, "Of items sold by the pound ... the average is about $3."
She adds, "We might sell one knife for $60, and we might sell a bucket of scissors for $2."
