Last week, a woman flying from Las Vegas, Nevada back to her home in Massachusetts had her frosted cupcake snack confiscated by the TSA because it was a “security risk.” Yadda, yadda, yadda, the TSA agent is really full today.
Ok, so there’s no proof anyone who worked at the airport ate the woman’s cupcake but I probably would have. It had vanilla-bourbon icing.
Putting aside my still sweet-minded holiday stomach, “Rebecca Hains told ABCNews.com today that a Transportation Security Administration agent at Las Vegas- McCarran International Airport seized her cupcake, saying the frosting sitting atop the red velvet cake was gel-like enough to violate regulations.”
“She was traveling with her husband and toddler, and thought her young son might get hungry on the long trip home,” writes ABC. “The cupcake was packaged in a glass container with a metal lid, which was why it attracted the attention of the scanner in the first place.”
Having travelled by plane over the weekend I can sympathize. I was asked to open my bag because of a candle that was given to me as a Christmas gift on the way home.
“The TSA supervisor, Robert Epps, was using really bad logic – he said it counted as a gel-like substance because it was conforming to the shape of its container,” she said. “We also had a small pile of hummus sandwiches with creamy fillings, which made it through, but the cupcake with its frosting was apparently a terrorist threat…I just don’t know what world he was living in.”
Haines is a teacher and the cupcake was a present from one of her young students. She’d first flown from Boston to Las Vegas with two cupcakes and had no issues at security. TSA spokesperson James Fotenos gave ABC this statement, “In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage.”
That obviously didn’t help Hains who said it really isn’t about the cupcake but how broader reforms need to be made at the TSA.
“You’d expect them to be consistent. If they’re doing what they claim to be doing and actually protecting travelers, they would be applying their rules using critical thinking. He gave no indication that really thought the cupcake was a threat,” she said. “They shouldn’t be delicious in one part of the country and a security threat in the other.”
My cupcake eating theory is starting to make more sense now, isn’t it?
(via Yahoo)
