Account of Flying with Firearms

Deviant Ollam Seattle and Missoula are both terriric airports for flying with fiarearms.
MSO --> SLC --> SEA 2016-05-05	SEA --> SLC --> MSO 2016-05-09

Luggage & Gear
For this trip to Seattle where I run the LockFest conference, I had three Pelican cases of varying sizes. One was my now-well-known "Road Cooking Case" described in this talk.

 

Outbound Travel
Antonio from Delta had me checked in pretty quickly, gun cases and all. One alerted at TSA screening and TSO Timothy Donovan proceeded to paw through all of my chef suppiles. It was the oil in my road cooking case. Ah well, all was cleared within 14 minutes of my having entered the airport.

 

Homebound Travel
Aki from Delta checked me in in under 5 minutes. Seattle does an awesome thing with firearms, having folk go to the "oversize" screening area which is a large, roll-top door down toward the end of the check-in hall (past United, Iceland Air, etc). The TSA only swabbed the cases and I was hitting the sky.

 

Final Details & Thoughts
Seattle and Missoula are both terriric airports for flying with fiarearms.

Air Travel Ratings
If you don't have the time or the desire to read the full text of someone's account of air travel, you can simply refer to the rating shown at the conclusion of each portion of that person's journey. The following criteria are used in assigning these ratings...

Four Stars	wheels up - luggage screened directly in front of you; you were certain the firearms cleared wheels down - luggage arrived promptly and undisturbed
Three Stars	wheels up - luggage screened relatively near you you; you were fairly sure the firearms cleared wheels down - luggage arrived with little delay but possibly bearing zip ties or other nonsense
Two Stars	wheels up - luggage screened somewhere totally removed from you; only indirect assurances that your firearms cleared wheels down - luggage was very slow to arrive and/or you had some difficult interactions with airline staff
One Star	wheels up - luggage screened somewhere totally removed from you; no one could assure you that your firearms cleared wheels down - luggage was misrouted or mishandled and had to be delivered to you later
Zero Stars	This is a special category for irreparable damage to luggage, locks, or your firearms... or outright theft or loss of them.
half-star results are possible... naturally, they involve partial or mitigated problems that somehow fall in-between the above categories