File Under: WTF?

Man drinks liter of vodka at airport line

BERLIN (AP) -- A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing a liter (two pints) of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new carry-on rules, police said Wednesday.

The incident occurred at the Nuremberg airport on Tuesday, where the 64-year-old man was switching planes on his way home to Dresden from a holiday in Egypt.

New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked as cargo.

Instead, he chugged the bottle down - and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.  A doctor called to the scene determined he had possibly life-threatening alcohol poisoning, and he was sent to a Nuremberg clinic for treatment. The man, whose name was not released, is expected to be able to complete his journey home in a few days.

If I was this guy, I probably wouldn't want my name released, either, for fear everyone would know how stupid I was. 

Always the inquisitive one, I did some research on German airport carry-on restrictions, and found that the same rule applies in Germany as it does here in the U.S..  According to the Overseas Security Advisory Council, "All bottles and tubes of a maximum of 100ml each must be carried separately in a clear plastic zip-top bag not exceeding 20cm x 20cm and presented at the security checkpoint." Actually, you're better off in Europe using the metric system - 100ml converts to 3.8 ounces.  So if I interpret the OSAC rule correctly, the man could have packaged his liter of vodka in smaller 100ml bottles, and then placed each bottle in a Zip-Loc bag and he would have been OK; I didn't read any stipulation on how many 100ml tubes or bottles one could have in their carry-on bags.  If only he had taken the time to read the OSAC website like I did, it would have saved him a lot of trouble and embarassment.  Not to mention emergency room and lawyer fees.

I thought about this from a monetary perspective, too.  I made a quick phone call to the liquor store up at the corner, and asked them for some prices on a liter of vodka.  He gave me the prices of several different brands, but the cheaper (but not cheapest) was $8.00 for a liter.  Now, if I were travelling like this man, I wouldn't want to take the expsenive liquor with me in my check-through baggage, simply because I woudn't take a chance on the bottle breaking and everything in my suitcase smell like Patron tequila; I would have bought the cheap stuff, and would have picked a brand that comes in the plastic bottle (appropriately referred to as "traveller").  I sure would not have stood there at the security checkpoint and gulped down over two pints of straight vodka just because I didn't want to pour it out or put it in my checked-through luggage.