Pushing the limits of carry on

I'm back home. I have returned after three months in Israel. Originally, I planned on making this post a recap of the entire summer. That was before British Airways imposed a severe ban on hand luggage (very high on the scale of blogworthiness). (I promise to have a recap post up in the next two days.)

In the wake of Scotland Yard uncovering a massive terror plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic, Britsh Airways banned all types of carry-on luggage except the following items.

• Travel Documents
• Pocket-sized wallets
• Prescribed medicines
• Spectacles and sunglasses (without cases)
• Contact lenses, without bottles of solution
• Baby food, milk and sanitary items
• Keys, but not electrical key fobs)

If they included the following item on the list of acceptable items, I would have been much happier:

• Ian's laptop

After trying to find a loophole in the list that would allow me to take my computer on as carry-on luggage (laptops fall under the "other sanitary items" category, right?) , I realized that I would have to take the ultimate risk (in terms of traveling with a computer) — put it in my checked luggage.

Solution: Scour Ben Yehuda Street asking merchants if I can have some bubble wrap. They understood my problem (or just wanted to get me out of their stores as quick as possible because they knew I wasn't going to buy anything) and gave me ample bubble wrap.

So I covered my computer with three layers of bubble wrap, put it in my computer bag, stuffed my computer bag with newspaper and put the bag in my North Face duffle. Now I am typing this post on my computer, which means one of two things: either my packaging worked or my computer broke because of my shoddy packaging job and I got it fixed in time to write this entry (I will go with the former).




To compensate for the space that my computer and other normally carry-on items occupied in my duffle, I was forced to purchase another piece of luggage. While I wanted to purchase a shuk bag and use it as my primary backpack on campus this year, the top of the shuk bag cannot be sealed. So I bought an Israeli-made backpack instead (I am comforted by the fact that on the website for the company that makes my backback, they list ballistic body armor as their top product).

What did you actually bring on the plane?

Here is a picture of my bag an its contents. Since I was allowed to bring a Ziploc bag, I wanted to bring the biggest Ziploc back that I could find.


Aside from travel documents, the only other item in my bag were wet naps that my mom gave me when I left back in May and never used. Because the wipies were on the list of acceptable items, but only if you are traveling with small children, I wanted to see if they would let me bring the on the plane. The person working the counter at Ben Gurion warned me that they might not let me bring the wet naps on the plane from England, but security in London didn't have a problem with them.

Except for not having any carry-on luggage, my travel was uneventful. I made my Sherut at 3:50 on Sunday monring. Actually, I accidentally dozed off for a few seconds at the gate while waiting for my flight, but someone that I met while waiting in line to check my bags woke me up (After staying awake for 24 straight hours, I probably shouldn't have sat down at the gate with nothing to do 10 minutes before they started boarding). I went through security and made my connection in London without any problem. The person that sat next to me on the plane arrived at the airport at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday for a noon flight and didn't get through security in time. Luckily, I was only making a connection and didn't have to go through intense checks that other passengers had to (It makes you wonder what happens to all of the stuff that got confiscated at security because of the intense security measures. I believe that the workers have a lottery and use the draft format to select which items they want).

By the way, I was not bothered by the lack of carry-on luggage on British Airways becausee their in-flight entertainment is second to none. Every passenger has a personal TV with, either 18 different channels of movies and TV (I had this from Tel Aviv to London) or an On-Demand style setup where you can select from over sixty different movies, TV shows or music channels (I had this from London to Detroit).

And I finally arrived at home. My parent were very happy to see me. I was very lucky because the London-Detroit flight was the only US-bound flight that I saw was leaving London on Sunday morning.