Items you should never put in your cabin baggage

With the ever-worsening baggage restrictions for flights, going through security can resemble hell rather closely at times. Drawing from my experiences, here's a list of items you should never put in your cabin baggage:

1. Items on the no-fly list

'Nuff said.

2. Dense metal plane-shaped objects

Security guards will turn on the laser beams in their eyes once their scanners show signs of suspicious metal objects. Said lasers become more intense when the metal is dense, and when the suspicious item happens to resemble a miniature plane, watch out. I knew the world was paranoid about planes smashing into skyscrapers, but I didn't know that just having a plane shaped object could buy suspicion.

And the true identity of the dense metal plane-shaped object I was caught with? A mini cross with a base to help it stay upright.

The item in question. Suspicious indeed...

3. Metal chopsticks

Born Korean, I prefer to eat with metal chopsticks rather than wooden ones. But of course, they're made of metal, and they're long and thin! A potential threat, you say? The guidebook available for security guards at Heathrow Airport doesn't list chopsticks as a potential threat. The guards' supervisor will even tell you the metal spoon that comes with the chopsticks is also good to go.

4. Invisible items

Watch out for these, especially if you're a skilled packer. Security guards will tell you that they're searching for "nothing [they] can tell you about". They will then proceed to empty out half of your well packed bag, and loosely stuff everything back in when they fail to find the suspicious object after going through all of the contents. Not surprising, considering it doesn't really exist...