I for one say hallelujah! Why? Because I have not
lost about half a dozen really nice Swiss Army pocket knives while traveling. I keep one on my keychain for all sorts
of reasons: cutting away errant threads on my shirt, slicing off hangnails, carving my name in a tree here or there.
The one thing I’ve never done with my small pocket knife is assault anyone, let alone a pilot. And I’ve
always thought that the little blades on these things would make really bad weapons.
Yet the Transportation
Security Administration disagreed, and endlessly took away my knives at the airport, even though if I was a really
dedicated, well-trained terrorist, I could have easily fashioned a nice weapon out of a sharpened plastic spoon.
Well, they are finally
coming around. The TSA recently introduced new screening procedures at the nation’s commercial airports that allow
passengers to take small scissors and tools on planes. That said, there will also be increasing random passenger
checks. Still I’m so happy to hear that under the new procedures, scissors less than four inches long and tools
less than seven inches long will now be allowed on aircraft.
So yes, you can bring your scissors…the small
ones.