Wikimedia Commons100-ml bottle, not shown at actual sizeWe are well trained now: when travelling on planes, we know we can’t put anything over 100 millilitres into our carry-on luggage, and any mistaken attempts end with forfeiting our valued moisturizers and designer water bottles. Through hard battles lost, we’ve succumbed to the demands of airport security authorities, all for the belief that this restriction makes us safer. And now as we pause to consider, we wonder: why can’t we put liquids, gels, and aerosols in bottles larger than 100 ml, and why must all these bottles fit into a one-litre plastic bag?
Our first guess is partly right: it is something to do with a potential terrorist threat from liquid explosives. But solid explosives are widespread too. And in focusing our tunnel vision on individual passengers, we forget that a bomb in checked luggage can be large enough to take down a plane, while a few harmful millilitres in a purse may only blow out a window.
The so-called liquid limit got its start on August 10, 2006, when UK police arrested twenty-one suspects in London over a plot to detonate the liquid form of explosive TATP aboard as many as ten flights bound for Canada and the US. Immediately, the fortress gates of the three countries slammed shut: transport authorities banned all liquids (excepting baby formula, prescription medications, and a few others), and the US and UK even banned carry-on luggage. A month and a half later, the US Transportation Security Administration introduced its 3-1-1 rule, allowing 3.4 ounces (100 ml) of liquid per container, with all containers to fit in one quart-sized (950 ml) bag, per passenger. Another month and a half after that, Transport Canada imposed a 100 ml/1 litre rule for travellers at all Canadian airports. (more…)
Flying is becoming socially taboo. The tide of anti-airplane sentiment is still relatively low in North America, compared to in the UK, where nearly half of the citizens are vowing to fly less for environmental reasons, and one in eight teenagers supports the idea of a ban on “travelling by air for leisure purposes.” Are we, as David Beers in his July/Aug 2008 Walrus piece suggests, at the end of an era?
Common predictions suggest that even if it isn’t totally socially taboo to take a plane, it still may be financially impossible to do so for the majority of people in Canada and the US, due to the dwindling supply of fossil fuels. The languishing airline industry will continue to merge and shrink (albeit with a few companies supported by government, according to the “too big to fail” principle). Flying, many forecast, will be the exclusive privilege of the elite once more.
At present, though, many of us still do fly. How can we fully appreciate this gift? We have tapped nature’s reserves of millions of years, billions of hours of sunlight, in order to skip across the globe. No generation in history has been able to experience this on the current scale, and it’s possible that no generation will again, at least in the way we enjoy. What have we learned from our time in the air? Can we, as a global civilization, get something out of this experience besides increased CO2 levels?
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