I’m nearly at the end of my few weeks of dashing around various countries by various means. Here’s an incident I witnessed this afternoon on a flight from Salt Lake City to Tucson, on a small commuter jet. I was sitting in the first row. The flight attendant was standing next to me, by the door. A tall, casually-dressed woman got on and presented a little yellow piece of paper to the flight attendant. He looked at it.

Flight Attendant: This isn’t a boarding pass. Woman: Yes, I—FA (Polite but confused): I’m sorry. Are you sure—W: I’m armed. FA: What? W: I’m armed. FA (looks at yellow paper again): OK. I haven’t seen this before. W: Thanks.

Then she went and sat down. Later the Flight Attendant went and showed the piece of paper to the pilots, and they had a chat about it.