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United Airlines Claims TSA Banned Comic Books In Checked Luggage For Comic-Con, TSA Denies It (boardingarea.com)
schwit1 shares a report: San Diego Comic-Con has become so much more than just a comic book convention. But comic books remain the heart and soul of Comic-Con. In addition to attendees being there to buy comic books, vendors flock to Comic-Con to sell their comic books as well. That's why participants in Comic-Con were shocked to find a notice waiting for them at the San Diego airport after Comic-Con: "COMIC-CON ATTENDEES: REMOVE ALL BOOKS FROM CHECKED BAGS." On Twitter, United Airlines confirmed the ban: "The restriction on checking comic books applies to all airlines operating out of San Diego this weekend and is set by the TSA. ^MD" Consumerist reached out to TSA and were told by a spokeswoman that the warnings about not allowing comic books -- or any kind of book -- in checked bags were simply not true. There is "no restriction on anything related to putting comics or any type of books" in baggage, and TSA never put out any guidance to that effect, she said. "In fact, they are allowed in both checked and carry-on baggage," the spokeswoman told Consumerist, adding that there were no delays in the processing of checked bags out of San Diego yesterday.
Books are heavy.
The comic book I bought is da bomb, dude!
I think this was in the book of Revelations. Page 75, Paragraph 8b.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
On the one hand, we have United Airlines. On the other hand we have the TSA.
Let's just assume they are both somehow lying, incompetent, or both.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the comic books fans—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Where will it end?
As if millions of comic-book nerds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
#DeleteChrome
On the one hand is a lazy, incompetent and mendacious corporation and on the other hand is a lazy, incompetent and mendacious government agency. Whom should I trust?
I was there the week before for the ESRI User Conference and the same signs were posted in the airport. They said something like all books from the ESRI UC must be removed from checked baggage. I flew American Airlines.
systemd?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
just give them time...
It appears this meant that books should be removed before the carry-on was scanned as part of the security check, and not that the books were not allowed back in the carry-on after the scanning and security check was complete.
It was likely a part of this pilot the TSA did, but United didn't get the message that the pilot was over with, or they didn't know the scope of the pilot:
https://www.insidehighered.com...
Better known as 318230.
My dad worked for them for 35 years starting just before the transition to jets, and I can assure you there is nothing I've seen so far, they cannot mess up with stupid mismanagement and/or lack of caring. They've even managed to mess up aircraft maintenance a time or two and crash a couple of planes as a result... But that's how big organizations always are. Inept, inefficient and dangerous if not well managed.
I will say this though, for an airline, they are one of the better managed carriers for it's size, at least they where before the bankruptcy. After that, who knows? Seems of late the management is sorely lacking in any vision for customer service in their quest for keeping their narrow profit margins. But that's a problem for the whole industry, now that price is more important to the consumer than service or safety. All I can say is this little experiment will NOT end well and people will die to pay for this cost cutting eventually. Aviation history, as short as it is, makes that clear.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
One should realize that words with no pictures to aid understanding can confuse the attendees.
Yep, no ban. United's official Twitter first called it a "restriction on checking comic books...", then later clarified that "You can still place the books in your carry-on."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Every time an airline claims their policy is dictated by the TSA and it's not, they reduce respect for and confidence in the TSA. They're going to keep pulling this shit until they start getting some hefty fines, or the idiots behind it do some jail time.
Nope, no sig
Why just fixate on ONE incident in the West. Islamist terrorists kill other Muslims pretty much daily They are a diverse bunch from many countries. It's not just the Wahabis. The Palestinians themselves were innovators in this area. Anyone that wasn't born yesterday remembers this. The same goes for Libya.
Syria just has a lot of poor fundies that refuse to use a toilet properly and breed like mice.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Thanks for making it clear you're an antisemite in the first paragraph, so I didn't have to read your whole racist diatribe. Now go crawl back under your rock.
That's like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.
Um, they replaced their unix/linux machines with MICROSOFT.
Yes, they messed up systemd.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
It appears that United Airlines posted a statement retracting the ban before the Slashdot article was posted.
From United Airlines spokesperson earlier this afternoon:
“While TSA is recommending that customers keep their comic books in their carry-on bags, there are no restrictions on packing them in checked luggage,” reads the statement. “We misunderstood TSA’s instructions and regret any inconvenience this may have caused our customers.”
At 4:55 PM:
https://consumerist.com/2017/0...
At 5:15 PM:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
In the uk the term seems to apply to a cosplay and specialised toys/jewelery fair...
A few years ago, United was about the only US carrier to make a profit. Unfortunately, all of them made a loss on the business of actually flying planes. They all buy fuel futures to let them plan their operating costs in advance and United made a fairly hefty profit selling some of theirs when prices spiked. I don't know if they've managed to make a profit operating planes since then, but the economics of operating an airline is deeply strange. RyanAir, for example, gets sufficient subsidies from a lot of the small airports that they fly to that they can make a profit even if the plane is empty, the passengers are just there to justify the subsidies (they won't be renewed if they don't deliver a sufficiently large total number of passengers). Anything that they take from their passengers is pure profit.
Over the last two or three decades, there's been such a race to the bottom for airlines that they're basically having to sell their tickets at below cost and make money elsewhere. They're not the only business to hit this. Some of the supermarkets in the UK got bad press about five years ago for paying farmers below cost for milk. Milk goes off sufficiently quickly that unless you have a second customer lined up, if they supermarket refuses to pay your production costs you either make a small loss selling to them or make a large loss disposing of the milk. In the long term, this isn't sustainable, because it just pushes farms out of the milk business. The same seems to be happening with airlines.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But can I keep them in my carry-on? Or should my turds be checked?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Remember the occasion when a male passenger was allowed a full can of beer, but the female passenger sitting beside him denied a full can of cola for security reasons.
The real reason UA banned comic books was the weight and balance. People were trying to check 150lbs of comic books in their standard-sized luggage, and the planes cannot handle that kind of density for any additional cost. $1M in luggage fees can't make a 737 haul 5 tons of comic books in the luggage hold, not to mention the wear and tear on baggage handlers.
I wonder just which "instructions" the TSA gave them, and if they would be willing to produce a copy of these alleged "instructions" so that we may understand how they might have been "misunderstood."
Knowing comics in transit could be valuable, and fear that their agents may steal at an abnormally higher rate than their normally high rates of theft. So the instruction was really meant to be...
"Please keep any valuable comic books in your carry-on baggage and avoid placing valuable items in checked baggage as our agents are known to steal them."
I thought comic con was about non-comic book related celebrity appearances and dressing up like a dalek?
People are actually still taking comic books to these things?
6. All of those nonrefundable tickets would be required to be transferable. In the event that you got sick before the flight, or your grandma died, or you pulled jury duty, you could sell or give your ticket away to someone who could use it. Allow the carrier to charge a fee of $25 or so to validate and register the transfer of ownership, which would also be the fee and procedure for fixing a misspelled name on a ticket.
Airlines would immediately claim the return of Stalin, but they they would benefit a lot from such a rule, even though it would reduce the number of seats they could sell twice. No more lines of people wheedling for refunds because every case is special, no more screwing around with doctor notes and death certificates. And because passengers would no longer look forward to flying as though were root canal surgery, it would motivate people to travel more. Being able to pick up cheap tickets to Vegas on eBay would even revive the idea of spontaneous getaways that don't just mean jumping into the car.
This may be a bizarre article, but it's about a bizarre thing that actually just happened, and which affects nerds.
Hand them to the TSA, they need more personnel anyway, and with a week of training or two...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Put both into a sack, get a 2by4, start hitting the sack.
You will hit the guilty party.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's purely security theater. The web and my personal connections are replete with former TSA people and the stories they tell of managerial ineptness is astounding.
And the federal side has no clue as to what's going on. They're just propagating edicts and so rank and file TSA employees are interpreting those edicts and coming up with ridiculous rules.
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We are always testing procedures to help stay ahead of our adversaries. We were testing the removal of books at two airport locations and the testing ran its course. ~TSA
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Quotes from the TSA:
We are always testing procedures to help stay ahead of our adversaries. We were testing the removal of books at two airport locations and the testing ran its course.
So, with that out of the way, you might be wondering why we were interested in books. Well, our adversaries seem to know every trick in the book when it comes to concealing dangerous items, and books have been used in the past to conceal prohibited items.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.