Customs
From What The Wiki?!
When packing for your flight, keep three things in mind: Things you may only bring a limited amount of, things you shouldn't have in your hand luggage, and stuff you can't bring, and have to buy locally if you need it.
Contents |
Limited goods
This depends heavily on where you live in, and especially whether you live inside the EU or not. Goods that fall in this category include:
- Alcoholic beverages
- Cigarettes and tobacco products in general
- Food
- Jewelry
Hand luggage goods
In general, if it is electric or electronic, you'd better pack it as hand luggage. Why?
- Expensive stuff (electronics) in your checked-in luggage gets often routed to different place than your checked-in luggage.
- Stuff that has a lot of wires or clock mechanisms (alarm clocks anyone?) looks nasty in X-ray and is liable to cause your checked-in luggage to be opened, and not necessarily properly closed afterwards.
- You are coming to a hacker event. You will find it much more fun if you have your hacker stuff with you, and lose your clean underwear and socks, than the other way around.
Of course, having said this, if your electric/electronic stuff falls under the following category of articles (like this), it should be in checked luggage.
Non-hand luggage (checked luggage) goods
As a rule of thumb, anything that could be used to hurt someone else doesn't belong in the backpack/purse/... you want to bring on board. What you can and can't take inside a plane depends a lot on the airport you start from. Here's a partial list:
- Knifes, nail files, harpoons, axes, everything else that's sharp and pointy
- Lighters of all kinds and matches.
- Leatherman and similar tools
- Most tools, like drills, soldering irons, hammers, nails.
- Sticks, like walking sticks, baseball bats, paddles, umbrellas or fishing rods.
Banned goods
Special note that even though (especially Amsterdam) has ample supplies of drugs available, the fact that you can semi-legally buy them there does not mean that you would be allowed to import or export them. It's your life, don't throw it away by forgetting your friend's joint in your tent when leaving the campsite and heading for the airport.
Then there's the stuff you can't transport via air travel at all. This includes:
- Actual weapons like crossbows, guns, rifles, mines, grenades, swords, ...
- tasers, pepper spray, and anything that looks like a real gun.
- Explosives of all kinds
- Gasses like propane or butane
- Flammable liquids like gasoline
- Burnable solids like magnesium, fireworks, torches, ...
- Oxidants
- Toxic or infectious materials like rat poison or blood samples
- Radioactive materials
- Corrosive substances like quicksilver (mercury)
- Car engine components that contain or have contained fuel
- Fire extinguishers (Yep, that's funny.)
This list has been taken from a EU law on air security from February 2004, and has probably been extended since then. In general, if something you want to take is closely related to one of the listed items, deal with it like a listed item. When in doubt, check with the travel agency or airline you booked the flight with, they always have current lists for your region.
