I am going to tentitively add my two cents in. At the airport near me you can't board the plane with ANYTHING. No pens, pencils, bottle openers, lighters, nail files, scissors, excessively large keychains (I wonder what the 'official' parameters are on that one), and partically anything else your average underpaid wageslaves think might pose a threat, like cellphones, ipods (can you believe it), and pdas. The list is enormous. They have the tendancy to confiscate everything. I'm not too sure what acrobatics you have to go through to get it back.

Of course, as stated once you get past the check point you can go into one of those lil shops and buy back practically everything they took from you. I never thought of it, but it seems like airport security could just be a scam to get you to buy more stuff.

I think its all rather ridiculous, no offense to anyone who feels different. If I flew often,I might think start to consider it my civic duty to start going into those shops just to see how much stuff I couldn't have, just moments before, I could openly buy and blatantly carry on the flight.

I agree with the people who say that post 9-11 highjackings are going to play out alot differently because of what happened. I also believe most of the terrorists have the impression that 9-11 made plan high-jackings to hard to bother with. The next big terrorist thng wil come from somewhere else.