Remember all those news stories a few weeks back about how the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) was going to once again allow airline fliers to carry small pocketknives, golf clubs, pool cues and wiffle bats in their carry-on luggage? Well, turns out pink, plastic iPhone cases that look like brass knuckles aren’t on that list.
Erin Smith, the Canadian-born, former Maui resident lead singer of the rock band The Throwdowns, found this out before a recent flight from Honolulu International Airport to Kahului. The iPhone case, a Christmas present from her boyfriend, does indeed look like brass knuckles, and could easily be confused for such a device, if you ignore the fact that the case is pink and made of plastic. Anyway, Smith apparently felt the phone case would cause no problems before her early Mar. 28 flight, since she’d flown many times before and never faced any questioning about it.
But this particular flight proved different, she wrote in her latest Fruit Punch Hawaii column. According to the column, a TSA agent first told Smith that she couldn’t fly with the phone case, but then failed to take the case from her. So Smith said she put the case into her purse, which did not set off any alarms in the x-ray machine. She then proceeded to board the plane. All seemed well, until three TSA agents showed up on the aircraft:
“I protested, told them this was really dumb but at that point I think they were on a war-path, having not appreciated being duped by the chick with the heels, curls and a brass knuckles Iphone case. They told me I could check it in my bag…which was, at the time already in the cargo hold below. Errrr…yeah. Then I had my Mariah moment, when I expressed my opinions on their stupidity, how if the case had a heart-shaped handle they would have not even cared, that I could do more damage with my high heels than with that plastic case. They totally hated me, but it had to be said. Or maybe it didn’t, but I said it. It was 7am for Gaga’s sake.”
Needless to say, Smith no longer has the iPhone case.
Click here to read Smith’s story.
Photo: Sean M. Hower
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