Next time you fly not only will you have to pull out your laptop and put it in a grey plastic bin, but you’d better put most any other electronic device you carry in there as well.
True?
False?
True. Only don’t expect the TSA officials to know what the hell is going on for the next few days. And we all know what that means.
According to Joe Brancatelli this morning, effective at 12:01 a.m., Saturday, August 4, “the TSA will require travelers to remove the following items from their carry-on bags and submit them for separate screening: video games, video cameras, DVD players and CD players. They will now be treated like laptop computers. You’ll have to remove them from your carry-on and run them separately through the X-ray machines.”
And yes, I’m sure the airlines are cursing the TSA under their breath this morning. According to a couple of folks we pinged this morning, nobody was given advance notice of the new rules.
Fortunately, the new TSA ruling doesn’t appear quite as onerous as you think. From http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/sop/index.shtm#video :
“Effective August 4, 2007, full-size video game consoles (for example Playstation, X-box, or Nintendo) and DVD players must be removed from their carrying cases and submitted separately for x-ray screening. Laptop computers and video cameras that use cassettes have long been subject to this policy.”
And then goes on to add “Small electronic items, such as cell phones, MP3 players, iPods and portable video game systems do not have to be removed from their carrying cases.”
It sounds like portable DVD/CD players are thus excluded … No?