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Comment by perlgeek | Hacker News Reader

Funny thing is: once you travel with a baby, basically anything goes. 1L water bottle? no questions asked. Even though the baby won't drink 1L of water on a 2-hours flight.

The whole restriction on liquids is fairly ridiculous, and even more of a security theater than most of the other checks. And I think the security guards know it, and use any excuse to look the other way.

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To be fair, traveling with a baby makes you much less likely to attack a plane.

This exception makes the TSA's policy more pragmatic and reasonable.

The harm of denying a baby milk or formula is worse than the risk of terrorism in this case. Not to mention is that it lowers the incidence of crying babies on flight.

The same logic could be applied to hand sanitizer restrictions in a global pandemic. Allowing people to carry a larger size could save more lives than the risk it poses. This is especially true when shortages can make it difficult to buy a travel size.

"traveling with a baby makes you much less likely to attack a plane"

Why would that be the case?

Statistically speaking, most people who travel with babies travel with their own babies, and strong parental instincts prevents most humans from putting their babies into mortal danger. So, traveling with a baby and attacking the plane you're on is very low probability.

Most attackers aren't that smart. Rules like this prevent many from trying an attack as it's much harder to perform an attack if you have to take your baby with you. No one ever said the 100ml rule was good, it was just the best alternative they could come up with.

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