So, what is the best way to sneak my disposable lighter through airport security? I can’t stand matches — besides being difficult to use outdoors, they make me sneeze. Having to buy a new lighter at every airport is terribly inconvenient, especially since most shops are inside the security zone and will have presumably stopped selling them.
I’m thinking in the waistband, behind the belt buckle.
If I were planning a domestic trip I think checked baggage underneath a gun might be a grand hiding place, but retrieving it immediately after a flight would be a delicate matter…
You know, as a recovering smoker…I have been obsessively pondering this issue ever since I first heard about how many they were confiscating.
This cries out for some type of citizen “can-do” where embarking passengers hand their lighters to debarking passengers as they pass in the terminal. Perhaps a handy “swap meet” location could be selected and communicated via the Internet…a la, in Dulles, meet under the XXX. etc.
It could be a new website that travelers check before departing…
As an aside, $50 bucks says that the whole ban was dreamed up by a Bic lighter sales type…
My first thought was that they should set up buckets for disposable lighters, ala the ‘Give a penny, take a penny’ things at convenience stores. It’s less wasteful and less of a fire hazard since they won’t accumulate so damned many of them.
How long until someone makes a lighter that is guaranteed not to set off the metal detectors?
So I looked it up, and apparently, matches aren’t included. From a CNN story:
The ban does not include matches. Passengers still may carry aboard a plane up to four books of safety matches. Not allowed on planes are “strike anywhere” matches, which can be struck using any abrasive surface.
So what’s the problem? (And maybe it was the Diamond Match sales guy, instead.)
Maybe it’s time to develop a 9-volt battery lighter?
I have an unpleasant reaction to the odor of a match being lit within several yards of me.
My friend Andy, who flies twice-weekly, strongly discourages me from bringing a lighter on board because “you’ll drop it and then take off a shoe… and somebody will tackle you and it wont be pretty. you’ll end up on a no-fly list and get stuck in Jerkmenistan or something.”
So long as I can catch a train from there to Prague…