Airport scheme sends confiscated items back to owners

It is a familiar scenario to any absent-minded traveller; one accidental packing mistake in your hand luggage, and you are suddenly forced to give up your innocent perfume bottle, knitting needle set, or expensive Swiss Army knife at security, unable to put it in the aeroplane hold and forced to leave it behind, usually in a rubbish bin.

Now, Marseille Provence airport is allowing frustrated passengers to beat the system, with six new ‘Tripperty boxes’ at security.

The boxes can be used by security staff to collect any otherwise-acceptable items that passengers have been forbidden from taking on their plane - such as tools, scissors, or bottles of liquids over 100ml.

The objects are collected each day, recorded, given a tracking number, and securely stored.

Passengers are then given a ticket with the number, allowing them to log on to the website box.tripperty.com, and select how they want to receive, or pick up, their object.

They can either choose to have it delivered to an address (€15 for an address in France), or pick it up at the airport on their return trip (€10). Passengers can also choose to give their object to charity if they no longer want it, if it would help someone else.

The Tripperty boxes, whose name is designed as a play on the words “trip” and “liberty”, are the brainchild of Caroline David and Yves Kerboriou, and the result of a project between the airport and French postal service, La Poste.

“I’ve seen situations where someone had a knife that was given to them by their grandfather, and was refusing to throw it away,” said co-inventor Kerboriou, speaking to French news source FranceInfo.

“I have also seen a child who wanted to take a plastic Star Wars sword on board the plane, and that caused such a drama. Before, there was no solution, people just had to throw their belongings away.”