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J.R.@A&M wrote:

allisji wrote:I've declared a firearm in my baggage on Southwest Airlines two times. Most recently was the week before Labor Day.

They never affixed anything to the outside of my bag.

Interestingly some airports they asked me to open the box and they placed the "Firearm declaration tag" inside the box. And at another one they told me that they aren't required to open the box and see the firearm, they just taped the tag to the outside of the box. They did have me wait with the bag until TSA came to run the bag through the scanner.

The other day I flew out of IAH, Terminal B on United. The United rep didn't seem to know where to put the declaration tag, so I suggested she tape it to the outside of the gun case, because "that's the way they did it [to allisji] last time", which she did. I hung around the TSA area til they told me "No problem, man, you can leave," so I went on through security. No special tags on the outside of the bag. My firearm was in a nanovault with the cable tied around the internal "spine" of the luggage.

that's the same way that I pack mine.

I wonder at what point in the process the Orange Tag bags are theoretically supposed to be separated from the standard bags? I would guess that all of the bags are pulled off of the airplane and loaded on to the trucks, then when the bags are unloaded from the trucks and loaded onto the carousel they are supposed to separate out the bags with the Orange Tags.

Seems like there must be a better way to separate them to ensure that the tagged bags really do get separated. I would guess that even if you really stress the need for the bag crew to look for the tags, they will continue to miss them, because in a job that is as repetitive as unloading and loading bags it's nearly impossible to not get into a rhythm and not see one or two orange tags.

Seems like they should try to keep them as separate as possible from the other bags, by transporting them on separate trucks and loading them all last and unloading them all first.

I've declared a firearm in my baggage on Southwest Airlines two times. Most recently was the week before Labor Day.

They never affixed anything to the outside of my bag.

Interestingly some airports they asked me to open the box and they placed the "Firearm declaration tag" inside the box. And at another one they told me that they aren't required to open the box and see the firearm, they just taped the tag to the outside of the box. They did have me wait with the bag until TSA came to run the bag through the scanner.