Coolio caught with crack cocaine at the LAX airport checkpoint

by Scott Carmichael on

Someone needs to tell Artis Leon Ivey Jr. (a.k.a. Coolio) that the workers at the airport checkpoint are on the lookout for more than just guns, bombs and terrorists.

When they go through your stuff and discover crack cocaine, the will haul you off to jail. And not the good “Gangsta’s paradise” jail, they’ll lock you away in the dirty jail, with all the other naughty people.

Coolio posted a $10,000 bail and was released, and I’m sure the legal system will once again go light on this celebrity.

Finding the crack cocaine is bad enough, but Mr. Ivey also “got physical” with the screener. I’d say he’s lucky they didn’t Taser him all the way to his destination.

One part of the news release really stood out – Coolio was on his way to Tulsa, on a Southwest Airlines flight. Not that there is anything wrong with Southwest, I’m guessing that all those years of being in the music business have either made him appreciate flying with us commoners, or he’s simply not been successful enough to get his own private jet.

Remember kids, drugs are bad, but drugs in your pockets at the TSA checkpoint are really bad.

Check out these other stories from the airport checkpoint!

Cause for Turkish Airlines flight known: Dutch Safety Board issues warning

by Jamie Rhein on

Last Wednesday, a Turkish Airlines flight crashed in a field just 1 kilometer short of the runway at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The report as to what caused the accident has been released. After reading through it myself, and thanks to the paired down version of Gadling’s own Kent Wien, pilot and writer of Cockpit Chronicles, here are the details.

According to the report, there was a malfunction of one of the radio altimeters, the device that displays the distance of the airplane from the ground. The left altimeter, instead of reading the Boeing 737’s actual height at 1950 feet when the plane was descending, it read 8 feet.

At the point of the glitch, the auto-throttles went to idle because the reading said the plane was just above the runway thus about to land. This caused the plane to slow down more than it should have. The pilots didn’t have enough time to recover the speed needed to pull the plane out of a stall to a higher altitude in order to achieve a safe landing.

Along with determining the malfunction in the radio altimeter, the investigation also found out what happened to the plane upon impact. The tail of the plane hit first, then the undercarriage. When the plane hit the ground it was going at 150 kph. A normal landing speed is 260. Because the ground was soft, the plane had a “rapid halt” within 150 meters.

During landing, the tail broke off and the plane ruptured at the business class section which is where most of the fatalities and injuries occurred. Eighty passengers in all were injured and nine people died (4 crew, including the pilots and five passengers). The area of the plane around the wings was the most intact.

There are still investigations being made surrounding the altimeter’s malfunction and the Dutch Safety Board has issued a warning to Boeing.

For the report, click here. Prior to these findings, one theory about the cause of the crash was wake turbulence caused by a larger plane landing right before this plane’s attempt. (See article.)

Life Nomadic: How Airport Metal Detectors Work

by Tynan on


I’m a bit fanatical about shaving. Most of my possessions are pared down to the bare minimum, but my shaving stuff is the one big exception. I use a Merkur travel safety razor with Merkur platinum coated blades, a Dovo silver tip shaving brush, and Truefitt and Hill shaving cream.

Excessive, I know.

The blades that the razor uses are standard “safety razor” blades. They’re thin pieces of metal with a blade on each side. That sounds like something that the TSA would possibly prohibit, but in fact they don’t. They mention them specifically in their rules.

They prohibit “Razor-Type Blades – such as box cutters, utility knives, razor blades not in a cartridge, but excluding safety razors.”

Clearly, safety razors are permitted. This is consistent with my experience, too. I’m almost invariably selected for further screening. TSA agents see my razor blades and move on.

And somehow I’ve managed to resist any temptation to hijack a plane with them so far.

In New York a few weeks ago, things were different. The TSA agent didn’t like my razor blades. I insisted that the TSA rules permitted the blades. Things got escalated to the supervisor, an icy woman named Gohel.

“I specifically checked the TSA site and saw that these are allowed. Can we please look over the rules together?”

Gohel told me in clear language that the blades would not be allowed on the plane, and that, no, I could not look at the TSA rules with her. No amount of friendly yet firm pleading would change her mind.

The blades were taken.

I anticipated that this might happen, so I came up with a way to pass small metal objects through the metal detector. I doubt any serious weapon could possibly make it through, but it’s great insurance for those worried that poorly trained TSA agents will confiscate items you’re legally permitted to carry on.
Metal detectors work on a simple principle. One of the walls of the arch you walk through sends pulses of radio waves to the other wall which bounces them back. Their return is timed, and if they come back too soon then they’ve hit metal.

However, they don’t pick up every bit of metal. If they did, then people with metal fillings, metal rivets on their jeans, and metal rings would be unnecessarily detained. The sensitivity is always turned down a little bit.

Because the radio pulses are coming from side to side, if a metal item is aimed so that its thinnest profile is facing the walls of the arches, it is less likely to be detected. I keep a spare blade in my wallet, and it has never set off a metal detector.

There’s no way to know exactly how much metal can pass through a metal detector undetected. I’m sure that the higher ups at the TSA have metal detectors calibrated to catch anything big enough to pose a serious threat.

I have successfully passed safety razor blades as well as small pairs of scissors with no problem. The TSA rules clearly allow scissors under 4″, but agents sometimes have problems with those as well.

Trying to get anything seriously dangerous past the metal detectors would be a very bad idea. I’ve been randomly patted down before, and I wouldn’t want to be caught with something that isn’t clearly allowed by the TSA.

But if you’re sick of being subject to poorly trained TSA agents’ whims and opinions, consider keeping your razors and scissors away from them and their metal detectors.

What to do when you realize your airport shuttle driver is crazy

by Alison Brick on

When your airport shuttle driver does any of the following, you know he’s a little off: flip-flops on prices, each of the three times that you ask him for a quote. Plugs your address into his GPS navigation system, then asks you how to get to your place. Gets well onto the freeway, only to turn around to pick someone else up from the airport.

The driver I had the other night did all three. With a distinct glaze of ‘couldn’t care less’ in his eye.

What’s a traveler to do? Anarchy.

The two other passengers and I jumped ship. It being 12:30 a.m. and all, our options were few and far between: the local commuter train had already stopped running 30 minutes prior, and wouldn’t start up again for another four hours. A taxi for three people and three stops would be pricey and complicated. Other shuttles either wouldn’t go in our direction, had stopped running, or demanded the private shuttle fare of $80.

Our last resort: rent a car. To go 23 miles. (Yes, it occurred to me too that we might be the crazy ones.)

It’s just as tedious to think about waiting in car rental lines as it was actually waiting in line. So I’ll bypass that. But suffice it to say that after a lot of time and several quotes in the $120-180 range (before taxes), we jumped on the price we got for $78 after taxes (thank you National!). At $26 per person, it was cheaper than the highest price quoted by the shuttle driver: $49. So, we were soon on the road again, and with people that we actually had faith in.

To their credit, the shuttle dispatch called around that time to ask whether I had been picked up. I could’ve–nay, should’ve–chewed the driver out. But here’s the thing: I didn’t know the driver’s name, didn’t want to be charged for missing the shuttle after making the reservation, and plain couldn’t be bothered. So I told them what any crazy person would: “yes, thank you!” I did have a ride, truthfully.

Time lost in the process: 2 hours, 20 minutes. Distance from airport to home: 23 miles. Price per person: $26. Getting home safely before daybreak? Yep, you got it: priceless.

View air traffic like nothing you’ve ever seen before

by Scott Carmichael on

This photo is not a closeup of your DNA, nor is it the latest work of art at the local gallery. It is in fact, a representation of every single flight in the domestic US airspace over a 24 hour period.

The picture is part of a map built by Aaron Koblin, on display at Wired.com. The portion you see above is of air traffic into Chicago’s 2 airports, and if you look closely, you’ll clearly see planes headed for O’Hare, and those going to Midway.

The map is zoomable and scrollable, and can be sorted by make, model and altitude of the plane. The real time flight data was provided by FlightView. I can highly recommend wasting a couple of minutes of your busy day to play around with the map!