Officers for the Transportation Security Administration see a lot of stuff in the carry-on bags of passengers. Some of it is just fine for people to take on the plane with them. Other items, such as baseball bats, meat cleavers, and even Magic 8 balls, falls on the prohibited items.
So do knives, guns, and other items that are clearly weapons. Yet people try to sneak that stuff by all the time. In fact, even before the end of December, TSA found a record 6301 firearms in carry-on bags at airports. More than 88% of those firearms were loaded.
Some travelers forget they have a knife, gun, or some other prohibited item in their bag. Others know exactly what they’ve packed and go to creative lengths to try to get prohibited items past the checkpoint undetected.
The most outrageous items end up on the annual list of TSA’s Top 10 Catches.
This year, the list has some whoppers, including a gun found stuffed inside a raw chicken at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL), gun parts inside a peanut butter jar at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), and a knife inside a laptop at Richmond International Airport (RIC).
Here’s the full 2022 list, in a corny video put together by TSA.
The agency has been doing this year-end round-up for a while. And our favorites are still the early ones hosted by the late Blogger Bob” Burns. We’ve included his 2016 round-up below.