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11:57 PM
41
A: Why do airports, not airlines, determine what can be taken on board?

Johns-305I think you've misunderstood the situation a bit. The airline almost certainly allows peanut butter on board along with any other condiment. They have no reason to disallow this unless they have specific rules to avoid food allergy problems. You were referred to the airport because the more im...

 
I was allowed entry into the terminal with Peanut butter. But during the security check of the hand baggage, it got confiscated!
 
@Nikhil I think by "screening at the terminal entrance," the answer meant "security screening at the terminal airside entrance." There's usually no screening at entrances to the landside part of the terminal in the U.S. TSA mans the security checkpoints going into the airside in most cases (and sets the rules in all cases.) You would be allowed to put peanut butter in your checked baggage, just not in your carry-on baggage.
 
The TSA rules and near-identical rules of other countries' equivalent agencies) restrict "liquids, aerosols, gels, creams and pastes in your carry-on bag". Peanut butter is obviously a paste so it's misleading of you to criticize the government because you spuriously classified it as a gel. (Indeed, the peanut butter I ate most recently had separated such that about a third of it was unambiguously a liquid.)
@reirab Nikhil's name is Indian; I believe that India has security checks to even enter the terminal (possibly that's only at times when the risk of terrorism is felt to be higher). Note that the question doesn't mention any particular country.
 
Fun/related anecdote: green chili is considered liquidy, but frozen green chili is considered a solid; thus, at the Albuquerque airport, the screeners will let you aboard with green chili but only if it's frozen.
 
@DavidRicherby I was clarifying a point from the answer, which I do not believe was actually meaning to refer to entrances to the landside part of the terminal building, particularly since it used TSA as an example, which has no such screening points. In countries where those are present, they normally won't be concerned with your peanut butter (since that's a perfectly valid thing to have in your checked luggage,) but are rather mostly just trying to make sure you don't have obvious guns or bombs for an attack in the terminal.
 
11:57 PM
@fluffy similar: a peanut butter sandwich is fine when passing through security, a jar of peanut butter is not. Similarly a box of chocolate filled with whiskey is generally ok, a bottle of whiskey is not. The whole rule doesn't make much sense, it's security theater rather than security, but we have to live with it.
 
Changed to concourse entrance which does reduce the ambiguity.
@DavidRicherby I'm mocking the silliness of TSA rules and their classification of common items as 'dangerous' when in fact, their obsession with such minutia is making the screening process far less effective by their own stats.
 
@jwenting you can't make a molotov out of whisky-filled chocolate, that's why
 
@DavidRicherby: don't act like anything the TSA does is sensible.
 
@whatsisname Don't act like everything the TSA does is ridiculous.
 
@Nikhil - They confiscated your peanut butter? That's just nuts.
@WilliamPerron - I can see them trying this on MythBusters...
 
11:57 PM
@DonBranson Sadly, TSA is quite good at busting their own myths. :(
 
@WilliamPerron you could as easily hide gasoline or something in a chocolate filled normally with liquid liquor as in a bottle...
 

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