I'm planning a trip in January to the caribbean. Can anyone tell me if you can take a cigarette lighter in your purse or carry on? Many thanks.

Go to your airline's website. Most of them list what can be carried aboard their flights.

Probably not. They will probably find some excuse to take it away from you. I recently had my bag search for a pair of nail scissors they saw in my bag on the xray monitor.

They took my cigarette lighter in Boston on Oct 6. Interestingly, my husband had 2 in his pocket and they got through.

Each airline website has a list of those things that are prohibited. For several years anything flammable, including matches and cig lighters, have been prohibited. Enforcement was at best bad then and now it's spotty.

I think they are not on all airlines. I don't really understand this issue as to why not, especially matches. All of the incidents I've read regarding fires have been due to a passenger doing something stupid and having several diff. flammable items on them (eg, putting a purse/carryon right next to a heat vent with the purse having something leaking flammable in it). They ban other things with flmmable liquid in them, fuel, paint, etc. I will admit I've carried cig. lighters on me. The matches make less sense to me as you have to really work to get a match lit, some of them (the cheap ones) are difficult to light even when you are really scraping them, and I don't know how they could spontaneously ignite. I don't think this is a weapon security issue, but hazardous materials. As I said, I've had lighters in my carryon without even thinking about it and they haven't been detected, either, but I don't notice women getting their nail polish or hair spray confiscated (both of which are very flammable, even when not aerosol). Stuff in the cabin is only dangerous when put next to heat sources, and some allow a book of matches on your person (I've seen non-US airlines allow that), whereas others don't have subtleties. As I said, many female cosmetic/grooming items are flammable but they don't seem to do much about that. I would think a book of matches would be more likely to be allowable than a lighter, but in the US they may not.