Ban on Lighters
 

Airports Begin Ban on Cigarette Lighters

See http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...elers_lighters

((I))

They ban lighters because they are afraid that that a terrorist might try to light an explosive?

Yet they still allow matches?

These people are such morons that you want to scream.

Is it "flint in your carry-on, steel in your checked luggage"? or the other way around?

Anybody suspect that the producers of CBS Survivor might be behind this?

;)

Best wishes,

Rex

Okay, let's the address the facts here:

First, it is NOT the TSA that enacted this ban on lighters-it was Congress, and your President, who signed the Intelligence Reform Act Dec. 2004 into law. This Act, among many other things, bans BUTANE lighters. In the interests of efficiency, the TSA (who is charged with implementing these mandatory provisions with respect to aviation security) in order to cut down on confusion, rightfully decided to ban ALL types of lighters.

Now, as to the matches-a pax is currently allowed to take FOUR BOOKS OF MATCHES through the screening checkpoints-FOUR.

This makes no sense, you say? TSA is phasing through changes-thousands of people are going through the checkpoints PER HOUR, and will be screened for lighters-this is going to be difficult enough. Lighters ARE more dangerous, from a security point of view, than matches.

When TSA evaluates current domestic and international threats in the following months following the lighter ban- then it will decide, based on those threats, whether or not to ban match books as well.

One more thing-the IRTP Act bans lighters on aircraft, therefore, you may NOT put any type of lighters in your checked luggage -all types of lighters are now considered "prohibited items" which are banned on all aircraft, and which, if found on the person, carry-on, or in checked baggage, will be confiscated.

I know that in many international airports, there are signs being put up at the screening checkpoints to advise all travelers inbound to the US to give up the lighters-and I believe Tokyo's Narita Internat'l has asked the concourse vendors to stop selling lighters at the airport.

Well, at least they're allowing matches.

Can't wait till they start banning batteries as happened on a flight from Cairo to Rome. Oh, the howls !

I'm much happier about the ban on ice axes.

Lighters are now being banned but knitting needles were questionable right after 9/11/01?!?

...yet I'm sure you'll still be able to buy Cartier/Dunhill lighters in duty free, I'm sure a terrorist can stretch to one of those.

All I can say is thank god here in Britain they're allowing scissors and small knives back onboard!

"ARE more dangerous, from a security point of view, than matches."

how do you figure that. They explicitly say that the reason for the ban in the vabin is to prevent terrorists from lighting explosives. It's all the more ridiculous because there a zillion other ways of detonating exp[losive chemically.

Bedar, which airline banned batteries?? What kind of batteries, just alkalines? What would they do about people traveling with a laptop or any other device that uses a rechargeable battery?

So now that lighters are outlawed, only outlaws will smoke? :-D

Banning lighters is about as stupid as the strips of yellow tape at the Goat Haunt dock in Glacier NP in 2002.

In years past, one could ride the boat from Waterton in Canada to the end of the lake, get off, hike in the US part of the park, and return on a later boat.
After 9/11 passengers were allowed off the boad, but all they could do was look at the little visitor center and listen so some ranger story.

They official rationalization was that a terrorist could ride the boat, hike 20 miles over Stoney Indian Pass, get in a car, go somewhere, and blow up something.

Like he could not walk the lakeside trail, crawl through the bushes, and hike out the same way he would from the boat dock.

The supposition I suppose was that the terrorist was too lazy to walk down the trail on the side of the lake, but he or she was not too lazy to hike out once off the boat. Go figure.

Butane lighters contain about 350 cubic feet of explosive gas. If you took that lighter into the lave, broke it open, filled the space with butane and lit it with a match, it would blow the airplane's tail off.

Banning ANYTHING that might be questionable is fine with me. Yes, it is inconvenient not be be able to take little fingernail scissors, but hey, you get used to being inconvenienced! Banning lighters doesn't bother me one iota.

I friend mentioned the other day that at security screening recently at a US aiport they were confiscating knives and tiny little scissors, etc. Then he was seated at a restaurant past the security point eating when he looked around and saw people eating with their steak knives on their trays. Can someone explain why people can't take sharp instruments beyond security screening, but once they get through they can easily lift a steak knife from the restaurant and take it on board the plane?

Hi Patrick, that is a very good question. But for sure there cannot be a good answer. Seems like the airport security gets more ridiculous every day in some ways.

And if lighters are so dangerous, which from Robespierre's post they are, why are they only banning them starting today??

My husband was not allowed to take his lighter on a flight from Philadelphia over seven years ago. It was an expensive Dunhill lighter...fortunately I was with him at the airport and could take it home. Even better, he quit smoking three years ago, so it's now a non-issue.

Lighter manufacturer Zippo says sales may drop up to 30% as a result of the ban (Zippo is based in northwestern PA). From today's Morning Call (Allentown, PA):


"...Bill and Liz Dimmich of Slatington, awaiting bags from Florida, also expressed concern about the impact on Zippo. ''I heard a report, which said they may have to lay off people. That's a Pennsylvania company,'' Bill Dimmich said.

Greg Booth, president of Zippo, said the company's sales could be cut as much as 20 percent to 30 percent. ''Travelers often buy Zippo lighters as a remembrance of a great trip or location,'' he said in a release. ''In addition, Zippo collectors often travel around the country attending 'swap meets' and other events frequented by collectors.''

Some women travel with cordless, portable curling irons heated by butane. Are those being confiscated too? And I wonder how many women pack cordless curling irons in their checked luggage.

>..if lighters are so dangerous, ... why are they only banning them starting today??<

They were banned from checked luggage about 30 years ago.

The ban on carryon took effect today. The legislation was signed in Dec, 2004 as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

((I))

<<Butane lighters contain about 350 cubic feet of explosive gas>>

That sounds more explosive than it really is... a tablespoonful of gasoline contains a larger (gaseous) volume of "alkanes" (mostly hexane through octane) than that. I am sure many people have experienced the "whoompf" type of "explosion" when someone put some gasoline on a charcoal grill and lit a match. While clearly not a good thing to have on a plane - - and certain to induce major panic and a lot of smoke, I don't really believe that there would be significant impact on anything structural.

Of course, if one passenger can bring one through security, then lots of passengers COULD theoretically put them all together to make a device that is worrisome at the very least, if not "plane-threatening".

I'm not actually against this ban - - the aggravated travels of <i>collectors</i> notwithstanding - - but I think the &quot;350 cubic feet&quot; factoid is a little bit scientifically misleading.

&gt; Butane lighters contain about 350 cubic feet of explosive gas. If you took that lighter into the lave, broke it open, filled the space with butane and lit it with a match, it would blow the airplane's tail off. &lt;

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations using assumptions regarding the volume of butane (it's actually a butane/propane mixture, but that's a fine point) in a lighter (5 ml), the volume of an airliner lavatory (4 m**3), the molecular weight of butane, the ideal gas law, and the lower explosive limit of butane as specified in the MSDS, and I don't think it's possible to do what you're suggesting. I come up with a concentration of butane in the air that would be only about 10% of that needed to cause an explosion. Admittedly I didn't account for the lower pressure in the cabin, but if anything I think that would make an explosion even more difficult due to decreased partial pressure of oxygen. There are a lot of numbers and unit conversions in the calculations, so I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise - do you have any reference to a credible source that would support such a scenario?

I guess we'll just have to compare envelopes some time. The reality is that gas lighters have been prohibited from checked baggage for 30 years because of the potential for leakage and explosion in a confined space. This was never thought to be an issue in the passenger cabin because of its much greater volume. But now that we are under attack, the risk of ignition in a lavatory is considered significant.

No, they've been prohibited, along with many other flammable materials, because they would act as accelerants, not due to fear of explosion. And yes, I'm sure you could probably go into a lavatory and manipulate a lighter to create a pretty impressive fireball. But that's not an explosion and it's not going to damage the structure of an airframe (and certainly not blow the tail off), which is what you claimed. A true explosion requires that the butane concentration in an enclosed space somehow be controlled to between about 1.8% and 9.5% butane, then ignited. As I said, I don't think the 3 grams or so of butane in a lighter is enough to reach the 1.8% in the space of an airplane lavatory.

I don't get that. If gas lighters were banned from baggage because they were accelerants, why wouldn't the same prohibition apply to those carried by passengers, and for the same reason?

Between the rapid production of combustion gases and pressure increase caused by heating, I think the overpressure produced by even a small gas explosion is enough to blow out the side of a typical fuselage.

Whilst it's all very well banning lighters, I wonder how it can be enforced.

Steel ones never show up when you walk through a security scanner affair, so as such they've no idea that you're carrying one. Furthermore, if one had a gold/silver one it most certainly wouldn't show up even with those handheld wands. My point being that if a terrorist is determined enough to take something onboard an aircraft that is pocket sized then they'll find some way of doing it. Recently there was an item in the news about a gun disguised in a keyring that fired two cartridges - albeit inaccurately - that would be effective at point blank range. Bans are merely in place for public confidence, and serve little in effective security. Just look at speed limits and every single driver will have broken them on a regular basis or at least once - they're not much of a deterrent.

Hey, I'm still trying to figure out what terrorists would be so lacking in better ideas that my manicure scissors would be their weapon of choice!

Always thought lighters on board were a lousy idea, long before 9/11.

Yeah, Flygirl, you're absolutely right. We'll be much safer if the TSA is blissfully unaware of all the dangers that face us.

Why is there a huge thread on this!

Smoking is banned on most flights anyway, so why the hell would you want to take a lighter with you on the plane!

Why do you want to take clothes with you on the plane - are you going to have a fashion show of your entire suitcase?

People want to use the lighter when away, simple.

They want to use a lighter 'cause it's so hard to light a fire in the jungle at cooking time ?

Yes, because there are so many jungles in Europe.

On each Europe trip I stop at a tabac for a handful of Bics and bring them back to the US. European manufactured lighters don't have the childproof features required by those made in the states.

This matter is as lidicrous as believing that a terrorist will learn how to blow up a plane by reading the dialog above. Would a match and a can of hairspray not be more threatening?

ludicrous

I don't see it as a huge issue. I'm a smoker, sure its a bit of a pain...but putting a book or two of matches in my carry-on till I reach my destination and able to buy a disposable lighter sometime after arrival is no big deal.

I just certainly hope that passengers thinking they'll get around the ban by putting them in checked luggage doesn't happen. While we know lighters or any other kind of flamable items are banned and have been banned in checked luggage, and or good reason, certainly not a security reason its pure safety and common sense.

Thanks, Robert Reid! Doofus #1! and while we are at it, how about this thing about taking off shoes at security? When ONE person ONE time can invert to fabric of society so completely, things are really whacked!!! OK, enought of this thread!

I quite agree with the hairspray thing, also it's with far more pressure than a lighter could ever have and a vastly greater volume. The authorities never see sense.

My favourite incident is being refused razor blades through security, only to be able to buy them in the chemist past the security...how inconsistent.

:-*((L))((K))((L)) :-*

A little too much of the Pimm's I think my dear.

To answer the question as to why a smoker on a nonsmoking flight would need a lighter....well quite simply to light up after leaving the terminal. Of course, matches work too....as I said its not a big deal.

I don't understand the responses going back and forth about lighters in checked luggage vs. carry-on cabin from the wannabe scientists on this thread. It has not one thing to do with any of that, it is just simple common sense. You put a flammable item in an inaccessible area and a fire starts...not a good thing, albeit unlikely being unpressurized...lack of oxygen to feed it vs. in the cabin area where it would more easily ignite however be dealt with and more importantly realized immediately....it certainly wouldn't blow the tail off, would cause some bad burns to anyone nearby. Silly issue.

For hairspray (aerosol), thats been banned in checked luggage for the same reasons. To my knowledge safety razors are allowed in your carry-on unless they've changed that and I've just not been aware and somehow getting through with them.

Happy travels.

Too much? nothing is enough if it's for my sweet&amp;lovely m_kingdom ((K))