Gelling With The TSA
Rest assured, citizen, that the always-vigilant Transportation Security Agency is one the ball, protecting you and your loved ones from the potential deadly terrorist threats of … cupcakes. This from USA Today:
The Transportation Security Administration says its agents did the right thing in confiscating a woman’s cupcakes at a Las Vegas security checkpoint last month.
On Monday, the TSA took to its public blog to address the Dec. 21 incident.
The agency notes Rebecca Hains’ cupcakes – the two that caused the stir – were packed in jars filled with icing. That, the TSA says, means the icing is classified as a gel – which falls under the agency’s guidelines on liquids.
Not your everyday, run-of-the-mill cupcake, in other words. Or more specifically, in the TSA’s words:
This will be short and “sweet.” Like many of you, when I think of a cupcake, I don’t think of it being in a jar. However, the photo below shows the “cupcake” that was prohibited from being taken into the cabin of a plane last month.
I wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill cupcake. If you’re not familiar with it, we have a policy directly related to the UK liquid bomb plot of 2006 called 3-1-1 that limits the amount of liquids, gels and aerosols you can bring in your carry-on luggage. Icing falls under the “gel” category. As you can see from the picture, unlike a thin layer of icing that resides on the top of most cupcakes, this cupcake had a thick layer of icing inside a jar.
In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage, however, the officer in this case used their discretion on whether or not to allow the newfangled modern take on a cupcake per 3-1-1 guidelines. They chose not to let it go.
The background on this story gets even more ridiculously delicious, considering that the pair of potentially lethal desserts had made it through a TSA checkpoint at another airport before being nabbed in Vegas, where the cupcake wielding Rebecca Haines was finally stopped (in all fairness to the TSA, this Haines woman definitely looks like would-be terrorist; check the video and judge for yourself):
She said she was able to pass through Logan International Airport security with two cupcakes, but she was stopped on the way back when she tried to return with one of them.
…
Hains said she had received the cupcakes as a gift and after eating one on the trip out west, decided to save the other for the flight back.
Hains contacted the cupcake company, Wicked Good Cupcakes of Cohasset, which said it will ship her a new batch free of charge.
“Apparently we’re a tasty, terrorist threat. I guess we were also amazed at what can pass through security in one airport, but not in another,” said Brian Vilagie of Wicked Good Cupcakes.
So it’s official: our country’s homeland security has become a living, breathing Monty Python sketch.
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