Tripods allowed as Carry ons for Air Travel?

I have never travelled with my tripod, so I'm wondering if they (Southwest) will let me carry it on?

 

Do you have a case for it Tim? ; I don't and I doubt we will have room in the luggage. ; Hence the desire to carry it.

 

When I went to Disney last month I had mine strapped to the side of my Tamrac bag and I didn't have a problem. It was out of the bag too.

 

Thanks for the input.....just found this blog post

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwit ... n-baggage/

No way my tripod will fit in my camera bag, I'll have to see if they will let me carry it on.

 

i always check mine in my luggage, because i've called tsa several times about their official stance, and the official answer always is "it's up to the individual screener", not reassuring, and my luck i get the one that had a domestic disturbance that day and just wants to announce their prescence with authority on someone, somewhere

 

I had the same problem in April and I was told the best thing was to pack it in checked luggage by my airline

 

I've always just packed mine in my checked luggage.

 

it's sits more poorly with me than most can ever imagine, i just want to point out, hey , i pay your salary, but i'm advised by my wife against this, unless i want to be stranded at whatever airport i'm standing in
as far as i know these people still have not figured out how to remove that toddler in the midwest who somehow ended up at 6 months old on the no fly list, he's probably about 2 now, everyone at homeland insecurity agrees it's a mistake, but last i heard, there is absolutely no provision to remove once on the list, and no one is willing to step up and take him off, just in case at age 4 he decides to become a terrorist. too busy protecting their own a**

 

First off, no support for the TSA from me. ; You know what the GA (general aviation, private pilots) community calls the TSA? ; Thousands standing around. ; There are stories of small GA airports with their own TSA agents that really do nothing, but have to be there because of regulations. ; Yeah, you'd think that if the TSA had a legitimate function the aviation community would appreciate them but they're pretty much uniformly despised. ; I want to try to stress that my anger isn't directed at the individual guards, mostly the ones I've dealt with have been pretty decent, except for one insane example, they're "just doing their jobs". ; That one example was weird.. I inquired about the possibility of doing a hand inspection of my camera because I'd heard that the X-ray machine might damage the sensor, it seems not likely to be true but the suggestion was that the x-rays might cause hot pixels. ; So I asked this woman about it, and her response was "THAT'S A LIE!". ; Very angry, like I'd just accused her of something.

This bag size thing is a mess, but I don't blame it on the TSA. ; Long before the TSA we had official carry on restrictions. ; Which had been largely ignored, and still are until carry on capacity limits are reached, then the airlines kind of have to start cracking down, once all the carry on space is used up there really is nowhere else to put extra carry on bags. ; I expected much worse than what I've seen so far, when I flew to WDW this year I actually flew with more carry on baggage than I have in a long time, my usual backpack jam packed with camera gear and some electronics that I don't trust to checked baggage plus another backpack that was a bit less tightly packed with an extra lens, an external hard drive, and some other stuff. ; I was afraid they'd nix that, but I didn't get any hassles.

Considering the number of people walking on the plane with large rolling bags plus backpacks and such it was only fair that I was let on, but I felt kind of conspicuous walking on with two backpacks. ; As a good little traveler I crammed by large pack under the seat and put the small pack into the overhead where it took up minimal space and left plenty of room for those monster roller bags everyone else was bringing on.

However, as to tripods.. I've never tried to carry it on. ; Because there the TSA does get involved. ; They of course have their list of prohibited items, but as has been pointed out the guards at the checkpoint can pretty much decide whatever they want is prohibited. ; And, as far as I can tell, can immediately arrest you for trying to carry a prohibited item through the checkpoint even though they only decided it was prohibited then and there. ; I too figured that a tripod could be considered club like, and so packed it in checked baggage. ; I wasn't happy doing that, but I did the best I could, putting it in a tripod bag (a thin skinned case) and stuffing the bag with socks and underwear and such for extra padding. ; And then putting that bag in the largest suitcase I had available. ; It barely fits. ; It seems to work, I've done that on two air trips so far. ; It makes me nervous every time, but I absolutely have to be able to do night photography, it's my thing.

 

Since 9/11, I've always put the tripod in my suitcase. ; To get it into the suitcase, I have to take the head off of it, which means that I also have to carry a screw driver with me. ; Its kind of a pain, but I don't want to risk having it taken from me by some overzealous TSA agent. ;

 

I always try to avoid checking my bags if I can. In the past year I've stowed my tripod in my carry-on bag and never had a problem with TSA through many different airports. I also thought that it would be considered a "club-like" instrument, but it gets through every time. I even heard one x-ray checker remark to another, "that's a tripod, right?". So, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

Huh.. interesting. ; I would still suggest caution, I just can't believe that tripods can be largely allowed through security. ; The presented anecdotes certainly seem to suggest that that is the case, but, well...

All it takes is one security guard who says otherwise. ; This isn't like the security at the WDW gates. ; If the guard decides to disallow the tripod you can't just go back and try again.

 

I've been putting it in the bottom of my carryon bag for the past 3 or 4 trips. Haven't had a problem yet