** yawn **
Do go on.
A couple of lighters are not potential explosives.
What about a couple hundred? Or 10,000? So the author is some sort of special personage who has some soi-disant Constitutional right to violate the airline's posted rules? What about all the other poor schmucks on the plane - maybe some are lighter manufacturers. As I've taken great pains to explain in previous posts, laissez-faire is NOT the rule of the day when it comes to the safety of over 200 total strangers on an airliner.
And they were empty.
Again, irrelevant. The airline made no distinction between empty and full lighters in their written policy.
And they could have been mailed to the passenger if the stupid functionaries were not focused on our obedience rather than actual flight safety.
(broken record mode)
Then don't fly.
(broken record mode /OFF)
Are you really claiming that perhaps an ounce of butane is more dangerous than, oh say the vodka in the couple of dozen little bottles in the galley or the fuel in the tanks or for that matter the methane in the intestines of the passengers?
If the airlines required me to stand on my head and cluck like a chicken before boarding one of their aircraft, I'd stop flying anywhere tomorrow. You, and the author of the piece, have that same right.
(broken record mode)
Then don't fly.
(broken record mode /OFF)
I believe you when you claim to be unable to recall when this nation had a sane government and a free society. All that has been put down the memory hole and you have mastered the skill of double think.
I've mastered the skill of not wanting my aircraft to catch on fire from a couple thousand leaking butane lighters, a brick of Black Cat firecrackers, or "empty" oxygen canisters in the cargo hold (much like the "empty" ones that brought down that airliner in Florida a few years ago).
Double plus good, comrade!
Niiiice ... an Orwell reference AND calling me a commie as well. At least you blend your personal attacks in an entertaining way.
Well, I leave you and the others the field today. I'll take my Soma and eat my gubmint cheese now and catch another thread. See ya.
I don't object to the notion of American Airlines refusing to let the lighters on board. They may have appeared to be empty, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were. If e.g. the valve were defective, it would be possible for a lighter to appear empty and yet contain a significant quantity of butane. In the reduced-pressure environment of the cargo hold, this could have potentially bad consequences.
That being said, I see no reason the aircraft personnel should not have given the passenger his property and hold him he had to make alternative transportation arrangements for it and/or himself.
BTW, I'm assuming the lighters weren't constructed to have a removable gas reservoir. If they were designed to use removable gas cartridges, then I see no reason to prohibit them if no such cartridges were installed [nb: a very different case from having apparently-empty cartridges installed].