EPIRB - May I take on an aircraft?

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Is it permitted to carry EPIRBs on civil airliners? Nothing in the Easy Jet terms seems to prevent it other than a blanket ban on electronic items in checked baggage - presumably I can carry-on in the cabin? I REALLY don't want it to be confiscated by security!!
 
I would check as it not like a laptop that you can switch on and show its working!

On a X ray it will show all the circuits and batteries that a bomb would have!
 
That has got me thinking.....I used to fix aircraft but the bits being fitted never got screened so potentially an 'in between' company/courier could easily turn kit into bombs?
 
Well, you could show it giving its three flashes and there is a tamper seal so the initiated would be able to be fairly sure. However, it is designed to send out an international distress call when immersed in water unless stored in its cradle with magnet. Maybe that would be deemed undesirable in the case of the plane ditching?

Also, the power output is quite high - far higher than mobiles or other likely passenger gizmos. Finally, McMurdo say that the batteries are classified as hazardous material. McMurdo will charge £85 to send it. Yes, EIGHTY-FIVE POUNDS! I can fly the two of us LGW-LEI and back twice for that money!
 
I regularly fly with all sorts of strange electronics in my hand baggage and have never been asked to explain any of it. This includes radio transceivers, ATUs, external drives, dozens of connectors, adaptors and power supplies etc etc. I am always asked to remove my laptop for separate X-ray, but the other stuff just gets x-rayed and ignored. I have never been asked to power any of it up, which is just as well as most cannot be. So as long as your EPIRB is truly turned off, I would not worry about it.

In fact just before Christmas I had the works of a clock in a cardboard box with several packs of marzipan packed around it (in hold baggage). I would have expected this to look very suspicious, but I suppose modern systems are just very good at distinguishing explosives.

On the way out of the states recently I was singled out for ‘special attention’ as I guess my travel profile looked strange. Apart from the normal x-ray they just swabbed everything (including my disgusting trainers) and put the swabs into a magic machine, again presumably looking for explosives residues.
 
But then if you were BLACK and MUSLIM and you tried to get on a plane with an 'electronic device' as one poor SOB did with his laptop charger, you might still be in Guantanimo.

Despite being a UK resident, Bushpatsie Blair wont do anything to help him.
 
Epirb itself should not be a problem but the Lithium battery will almost certainly cause a panic. Lithium batteries are Dangerouse Cargo and if they check you could have the gear confiscated. Suggest that you check with the airline.
 
Sure, that's what McMurdo said. But surely camera clock batteries and various other things have lithium batteries? Is there some size below which they are not considered a risk? I don't understand why Easy Jet (and presumably others) don't make the instructions clear - how can forward-thinking passengers do the right thing if they can't get the information (you can't phone them, there is no appropriate number that I can see).
 
[ QUOTE ]
I regularly fly with all sorts of strange electronics in my hand baggage and have never been asked to explain any of it. This includes radio transceivers, ATUs, external drives, dozens of connectors, adaptors and power supplies etc etc. I am always asked to remove my laptop for separate X-ray, but the other stuff just gets x-rayed and ignored. I have never been asked to power any of it up, which is just as well as most cannot be. So as long as your EPIRB is truly turned off, I would not worry about it.

In fact just before Christmas I had the works of a clock in a cardboard box with several packs of marzipan packed around it (in hold baggage). I would have expected this to look very suspicious, but I suppose modern systems are just very good at distinguishing explosives.

On the way out of the states recently I was singled out for ‘special attention’ as I guess my travel profile looked strange. Apart from the normal x-ray they just swabbed everything (including my disgusting trainers) and put the swabs into a magic machine, again presumably looking for explosives residues.

[/ QUOTE ]

When you go through the X-Ray machine it is producing a coloured image. Certain things will "glow" in certain colours which will set alarm bells ringing. Marzipan would not glow in the said colours.

As for lithium batteries - the rulings are totally stupid. A mobile phone is seen as none hazardous but the battery on its own is declared as hazardous. Blame the bureaucrats... /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
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