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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

... notably before 9/11 ...

Derailing the thread, I took my first flight, age 18, in 2001. I was into carrying lots of tools on my belt / in my pockets back then, so carried on a pair of pliers, crescent wrench, flat head and phillips screwdrivers, a Swiss Army knife, a penknife, about six feet of baling wire, and lord knows what else. Dumped it all into the little round change tray, sent it through the X-ray machine, and re-pocketed it on the other side.

Those were the days.

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You can still do that minus the knife as long as the tools are under 7 inches. They even allow power tools. For check in can bring whatever tools you want.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

Tehcnically true but any sort of toolbag seems to trigger being selected for a "random" groping by the TSA and with tools being so cheap nowadays it often makes sense to carry on your luggage (and maybe your favorite multimeter or something) and hit up Harbor Freight where you land.

The kind of people that are flying around to fix expensive equipment aren't going to tolerate using tools from Harbor Freight. And the people that own expensive equipment where you have to pay someone to fly in to fix it aren't going to want it being touched by Harbor Freight tools.

I don't know. My friend managed to do this by accident - he had a pocket knife in his backpack that he forgot about. Just threw the backpack in the X-ray scanner and picked it up on the other side. Only noticed it when we were changing flights.

This was just a few years ago, a day or two after France had had one of its annual terrorist attacks.

I too have brought a knife through security... not sure how much of it was me versus the fact that there were a whole bunch of Boy Scouts right in front of me, so they might've though I was with them or something.

7 inches would be luxurious. In Canada we're limited to 6cm (2.4 inches) for the head/shaft of the tool, but in practice, I've had small screwdrivers confiscated for being slightly over 6cm including the handle.

https://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/en/item/tools

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