Body Piercings not Allowed on Commercial Flights?

Posted by The Mad Ape as Humor, Mad Ape Rants, Oddities

I have always thought people who mutilate their body with piercings are a bit on the mentally ill side, but a security risk? I never saw this one coming.

Take case in point: Mandy Hamlin, a 37-year-old woman who was forced to remove her nipple rings before boarding a commercial flight. She was deemed a security risk. Why? Simple. She passed through a metal detector and set it off.

Since no one is allowed to board a flight until they can successfully pass through the metal detection process, one must remove all metal from their person until given the ‘all clear’. She couldn’t until she removed the metal. In the government’s eyes she may have had other metal hiding elsewhere on her that could be used as a weapon. So in order to prove she was safe she had to remove her nipple rings.

This was a bit of a tortuous process as one of the nipple rings had fused to her skin. She was forced to yank it out with a pair of pliers. So a word of advice to all of you piercing junkies: Unless the government changes its policy you had better hold off on flying or else take a pair of pliers to the airport. You may need them!

Further, you had better hope that you are not arrested by security, thinking that you had the pliers as some sort of weapon.

If you watched the above clip then you will see Ms. Hamlin’s lawyer stating that as far as she recalled she had never known nipples to be a weapon. I beg to differ and have proof positive in the following clip: