By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
What’s up the with the Transportation Security Administration and it’s ever-changing, shoddily-enforced, absurd rules regarding carrying liquids on board flights? I’ve written several entries on this (including here and here).
The latest comes in from today’s Baltimore Sun. Apparently, there’s a new development at Baltimore’s BWI Airport:
If you buy wine “to taste” at BWI’s Baci Bar & Grill, which is before the security checkpoint, they can bring you the bottles to take on the flight. Up to two bottles full per person.
Kudos to Baci’s enterprising owner, Germano Fabiani, who managed to “work the syndicate” and get the TSA to allow for his luxury wine what they won’t allow for our basic and necessary toiletries:

Just a few days before Christmas, Fabiani kicked off Baci’s wine program. Generally speaking, the only liquids allowed onboard an aircraft over the 3-ounce limit are those bought in the secure boarding area. However, Baci is located before the security checkpoint. So, Fabiani and the BWI folks have worked out an arrangement. Passengers can taste wines at the restaurant and then buy one or two bottles. Those bottles then will be transported to the plane and handed to passengers right before boarding.
Does that mean they can drink that wine on the flight?
“[Passengers] could drink it, if they carried their own wine openers,” Fabiani says. “But, [security rules dictate that] you can’t carry a wine opener.”

Well, that (the exclusion of wine openers) makes me feel so much safer. Not.
Please explain to me why I must cram my liquid and cream toiletries into a tiny quart-sized bag in 3-ounce or less containers. But people can take two wine bottles full of liquid on the flight. After all, that amount of alcohol could NEVER be made into a bomb, right? There’s no such thing as a molotov cocktail, is there?
Time to either get rid of these ridiculous liquid rules for Joe and Josephine traveler, or enforce them fully. The status quo is simply stupid.
If it’s okay for Baci Bar & Grill’s wine, it should be okay for your toothpaste and shampoo. Enough is enough. Time to stop looking things (ie., liquids). And well past time to start looking for people (ie., profiling–which works far better; ask the Israelis).
Baci is the Italian word for “kisses.” How appropriate, since Baci liquids come on board in far larger quantities than a quart-sized bag, while the rest of us get the kiss-off.
Cheers.
**** UPDATE, 01/16/07: Add to this the fact that the TSA at BWI Airport has the second highest rate of missing uniforms and ID cards–at least 426 of them–and this makes the new wine liquid policy even more of a joke . . . and a danger.