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Comment by 13of40 | Hacker News Reader

The really silly thing is that unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane. The US has plugged this loophole, at least to a certain extent, by seizing your food even if you just have a stopover between two other countries. (They took my banana in NYC on a flight from Paris to Vancouver and I'm still bitter about it.)

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No, this isn't malice. There's plenty of stuff you could legally bring. Fresh fruit is decided not permitted, though--while the odds of a pest coming along are low the consequences can be severe. We don't permit food to come in that might be carrying pests that are not endemic to the US. Australia is more isolated and thus even more strict because there are more things they want to keep out.

I was walking between two planes in the US, one coming from a foreign country and the other leaving for one, without leaving the building. The only way I could have let the banana loose to destroy New York would have been to run outside and huck it over a fence.

American airports generally don't have international-to-international airside transfers. In order to take the connecting flight, you must first pass though immigration and enter the US. You were planning to take the flight to Vancouver, but at that point, you could have chosen to visit the US instead.

> American airports generally don't have international-to-international airside transfer

I'd like to see a write up on why that is, because it seems like an insanely stupid arrangement at face value.

There's really no way to do it. The basic issue is that the US has no outgoing immigration control. I have walked from an international departure gate to open air and encountered no obstacles of any kind in the process, although I did pass through a one-way spot. (And the reason for this was pretty trivial--major delay, I preferred the food options elsewhere in the airport.)

How do you have airside transfer when there are no barriers to leaving airside?

yes, I'm not sure the logistics but it's definitely done in other places.

Certainly in Australia if you are travelling international you go through outbound immigration control. I'm not sure what happens if you need to get out again for some reason after you "exit" the country. I assume you have to "re-enter" the country by circling through inbound immigration. Perhaps having no land borders makes outbound immigration control more reasonable.

It does seem like the cost of adding some secure departure lounges might be less than circling huge numbers of passengers through unnecessary immigration procedures, security lines, etc

Or you could throw it in the garbage and somebody will do it for you. They don't incinerate garbage on-site at airports in the United States.

I haven't spent too much time in New York, but I don't think there are a lot of commercial banana growing operations there that could be affected. The real reason is they can't be bothered to track who's going where, but what they can do is seize your stuff, so that's what they do.

Customs garbage is treated differently.

Many places don't allow the transfer of uninspected fruit and vegetables to prevent the spread of disease.

>The really silly thing is that unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane. The US has plugged this loophole, at least to a certain extent, by seizing your food even if you just have a stopover between two other countries. (They took my banana in NYC on a flight from Paris to Vancouver and I'm still bitter about it.)

Whether it's silly or not, this isn't some new thing to boost revenue at airports. The US has long prohibited the "importation" of food items through airports. In fact, that was a key theme to the 1971 film, La Mortadella[0].

I'm not saying it's a good policy (I even "smuggled" some wonderful Dutch gouda into JFK myself a few years back), nor am I saying it makes sense in this day an age, but it (IIUC) has nothing to do with trying to make you pay more for food at the airport.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Liberty_(film)

Last I checked, cheese was allowed in vacuum-sealed packaging. Meat, fruit and vegetables are what's not allowed. Those you just have to eat before you go through customs after arriving in the US.

>Last I checked, cheese was allowed in vacuum-sealed packaging. Meat, fruit and vegetables are what's not allowed. Those you just have to eat before you go through customs after arriving in the US.

A good point. However, this wasn't vacuum sealed, just the standard wax around the ball of cheese wrapped in paper.

And I wouldn't have been all that excited to wolf down 2+ kg of cheese at the airport.

Fresh fruit is usually subject to customs restrictions for international travel due to concerns about agricultural pests, I don’t think this particular case was collusion with the airport vendors (but these days you never know).

Yeah, I know that, but the import restrictions for Canada should apply, and they're different from the ones in the US. (I'm not trying to imply collusion so much as overreach.)

My wife was apprehended in a Mexican airport by a beagle regarding a banana in her bag.

Did you know that the bananas we have today are different from the ones we had 50 years ago? The standard banana back then was wiped out by a fungal disease. Today’s bananas are all one variety of GMO, and resistant to such fungus.

That’s why produce is particularly scrutinized.

https://www.treehugger.com/extinct-banana-5201723

> unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane

You can do that at a movie theater too. At least, I did it back when I was poor. Well, not with a sandwich, but I got some M&Ms and a drink at a nearby supermarket to take into the theater, because that saves a lot of money.

But perhaps you did that in contravention of the theater policies; most theaters, if they have a concession counter, will prohibit people from bringing in outside food, but they don't search your bags or anything. In fact, one theater around here disallows bags entirely.

There is also the question of health code regulations. I know that in any restaurant which is inspected by County health inspectors, outside food is prohibited. So if you make a sandwich and you bring it into a McDonald's and you order a Coke and fries to go with your turkey sandwich, you will probably get kicked out. The main reason is because if something were to happen medically, whose food is to blame? Is it the food you prepared at home and brought into the restaurant? Even worse if you shared it to people who didn't know it wasn't prepared at the restaurant. The restaurant could potentially be liable for medical costs of people who got food poisoning, and their license to prepare food could be jeopardized.

Now, having said all that, this is not the case in airports or on airlines. They all allow you to bring in food you prepared at home, because an airport is not a "restaurant" with one kitchen where food is prepared. Aboard an aircraft, you could also eat your home-prepped turkey and Swiss sandwich instead of a delicious, hot, in-flight Kosher meal. If you get sick, well you get sick. I don't know if airlines can be liable for food poisoning, but they sure are cautious about peanut allergies these days.

Yeah, but a restaurant is specifically for food, so it makes sense that they would kick you out for bringing your own, but a movie theater is not a restaurant, like an airport or plane. I pay for the seat in the theater, and I'm not interested in their food.

They may have a policy against bringing your own food, but I don't think it's a reasonable policy and I don't see any reason to obey it if you don't want to and they don't enforce it.

If you want to make more money from the movie goers, just charge an extra buck for the ticket.

You can bring food into a movie theater without too much trouble in my experience.

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