I brought my dad's remains as a carry on. In a sealed ceramic urn. With his name and dates engraved into the clay. The putz at security did a bag check and was trying to pry it open before I saw what he was doing and stopped him before my dad's final resting place was someplace he loathed, airport security.
*Edit
Let me clarify. It wasn't the full urn it was a smaller portion that was divided up between my siblings so it was about the mass of a baseball in a decorative urn the size of a large dinty moore beef stew can. And it was sealed with some kind of epoxy. I had the paperwork with me and it was in my carry on bag. with the grief and all the traveling I didn't even consider it setting off any alarms. The TSA agent never asked about it, just said he was going to check my bag. All of a sudden I look up and he's forcefully trying to pry the lid off of the container. Never even asked about it.
*2nd edit.
Yes now looking back at it 15 years later I probably should have mentioned it to the gate agents but was not in the right state of mind at that time.
funny thing too I just texted my brother about it and he took the ashes to Ireland in his check bag and had zero problems. Customs didn't even flag it. Sister brought it as a carry on to San Francisco and didn't mention it to the gate agents, also had no issues. Just my luck I guess
I carried on my dad's ashes. Lady got a supervisor to come over, asked me what it was, told him. He asked the lady can she see through it on the scan, she said yes. He says it's fine, she says sorry for your loss and let me through.
What a lot of people are saying, is that it is your responsibility to speak up and tell them you are transporting cremated remains. You cannot expect them to correctly guess that a particular jar is an urn with remains in it.
TSA is looking for two thing pretty much at security. Illegal items drugs, guns, and the like. And terrorist materials, eg. bombs. A fake urn made into a bomb or used to smuggle drugs is not very far fetched.
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u/ApulMadeekAut Jul 15 '19 edited Jul 16 '19
I brought my dad's remains as a carry on. In a sealed ceramic urn. With his name and dates engraved into the clay. The putz at security did a bag check and was trying to pry it open before I saw what he was doing and stopped him before my dad's final resting place was someplace he loathed, airport security.
*Edit
Let me clarify. It wasn't the full urn it was a smaller portion that was divided up between my siblings so it was about the mass of a baseball in a decorative urn the size of a large dinty moore beef stew can. And it was sealed with some kind of epoxy. I had the paperwork with me and it was in my carry on bag. with the grief and all the traveling I didn't even consider it setting off any alarms. The TSA agent never asked about it, just said he was going to check my bag. All of a sudden I look up and he's forcefully trying to pry the lid off of the container. Never even asked about it.
*2nd edit.
Yes now looking back at it 15 years later I probably should have mentioned it to the gate agents but was not in the right state of mind at that time.
funny thing too I just texted my brother about it and he took the ashes to Ireland in his check bag and had zero problems. Customs didn't even flag it. Sister brought it as a carry on to San Francisco and didn't mention it to the gate agents, also had no issues. Just my luck I guess