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MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security, Forcing Man to Lose Flight

by Terrence O'Brien on March 11, 2008 at 09:18 AM

Airport Security Can't Identify MacBook Air, Causes Man to Miss His Flight
You'd think that being in charge of what "devices" are allowed on an airplane would require TSA (Transportation Security Agency) agents to be on top of the latest technology. Or that at least the head office would send out memos about new and unique gadgets that might confound the agents. But think again. As one man found out, the wild world of consumer electronics can baffle not just one, but several agents all at once.

One poor man missed his flight when a gaggle of TSA agents were unable to identify his fancy new MacBook Air as an actual laptop. The security person monitoring the X-ray machine was apparently perplexed by the lack of a hard drive -- it was the 64-gigabyte solid state memory model -- and ports on the back of the machine. When several other agents were called over and unable to identify the thinnest laptop on earth as a legitimate computer, the frequent flyer was pulled aside into a security cubicle and forced to stand just out of arms reach of his new ultra-light Mac.

Thankfully, a younger, and more tech savvy, agent wandered in and explained to the befuddled security reps that this was the new MacBook air and didn't have a hard drive. After several, progressively dumbed-down explanations the agents let the man go, but it was already too late, his flight was long gone.

Too bad that same tech-savvy security agent wasn't around to help us when we got stuck at Boston's Logan Airport with an Asus eeePC, which also has no hard drive. Security agents pulled us aside and had us wait a good 15 minutes until they figured out it was just an eeePC.

Next time we're sure he'll show up with a little more time to spare.

From Engadget

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Tags: air, airline, apple, breaking+news, laptop news, LaptopNews, mac, macbookair, security, top, tsa

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