Plastic bottle opener?

I live in Germany and I bought a plastic bottle opener there. The rear end has a grip for opening bottles of mineral water where the cap is on too tight and the end you are interested in has metal inside it for the crown cork but it is surrounded with plastic. There is no metal edge that can be used and I am sure you would be allowed to carry that onto a plane.

There are all kinds of openers that bear no resemblance to a weapon, and have no sharp points or edges. I'd think those would be allowable. FWIW I carry two keychains, each of which has an opener. Security has never looked twice at them.

That's right. Even corkscrews are fine (it would take far too many twists, so that somebody could easily intervene before it bores into anybody's heart). The best is a light metal bottle opener that has this shape (very common in Europe for under one Euro):

ooooo oo oo oo oo ooo ooo ooo

If, instead, your bottle opener has a sharp tip (like the old-fashioned piercing can openers), then somebody could potentially have an objection (given the anatomy of the human neck).

If worst comes to worst, you can open a standard bottle sideways in the door latch of standard doors (the part in the wall where the latch-bolt from the doorknob extends into*). They have the perfect proportion for opening bottles, but are placed sideways--so you have to be very deft to yank and remove before the beer starts spraying all over the place (though even some loss is acceptable--you can guard against loss by simply taking two bottles).

• This works in airport bathrooms too.

P.S. If you have a corkscrew, you can patiently use it to arc the individual notches of a beer cap slightly outward. Before you are halfway around the bottle twisitng the cap metal, the cap will easily pop off.

In my youth, I did the same with keys when the need arose.

You can pack your opener in your checked luggage no problem along with beer if you like. Well you could the last time I flew with luggage which was back in 2002. You might want to check with your airline to be safe.

Tom

Aye, and I still keep an old-fashioned "SPAM key" on my key ring specifically for that purpose. It is much smaller than a corkscrew or even most keys, but works swell for the method described above and won't risk borking your keys (yet I still feel slightly guilty about the person who bought the can of Spam it went missing from).

You can also master the countertop opening technique -- placing the lip of the cap on a sharp-edged surface and smacking it with the heel of your other hand. It takes a bit of practice to not make a lot of noise and foaming over of the beer, and is hell on the countertop edges, so I still find the spam-key to be superior, stealthy, and amusing.

Fun aside, I've had no problems transporting a plastic opener (with just a small metal insert that grasps the cap edge) through many airports (including Atlanta and Amsterdam) in the last year or two, in my carry-on bag. DrD