I just took a "loaded" ancient Waterman BCHR on an airplane trip, to see what would happen. Pointed up. It didn't lead the badly: a bit of tissue paper on the nib once at cruising altitude, and all was good - of course, it went dry during landing.

Just sharing my experience of taking a pen that wasn't in any way designed for air travel on a plane. Not as bad as I thought it would be.

More modern pens, in my experience, haven't leaked at all.

Good to know. Glad it worked out for you. I traveled with a bunch of pens in January in a 48-pen case - but I kept them nib up at all times during take-off and landing. No problems for me either.

My Waterman 52V didn't leak on me when I traveled with it, either. My Vacumatic did dump a little bit of ink, but it stopped quickly.

When I went through security, the TSA agent asked me about the pen and my pocket watch :\

I'll be flying around Christmas time and am hoping to bring a pen. I'm also hoping that they don't take it. I don't have any that I would be ok with losing. Any have a pen taken away because of all the new regulations? Anyone have issues at all?

Of all the pens I've taken on airplanes, none of them have caused the TSA to interrogate me.

Well, just flew up to Indiana for college.

I decided that I wanted to be careful, so I bubblewrapped all of my pens within my case, then bubblewrapped the case (after emptying and flushing each pen, of course), and ziplocked and bubblewrapped all of my inks. The only pen I kept on me was my new(ish) Parker "51" special (aerometric filler), and it was completely full before I left.

My inks and pens were fine, even after the horrors of checking the bags. My "51", on the other hand, emptied most of its bladder into the cap. I didn't uncap it midflight, and it was clipped, point up, in my jacket.

Hmm. That's peculiar. I had always heard that P51-aero's were okay on the plane. I did several flights in June of last year with my aero full and never had any problems. I wrote with it for large periods during flight. I just made sure that it was capped and upright during takeoff and landing. I'll be giving it a try again when I go to Europe this November. Guess we'll see what happens.

Dave

Well, some further reports:

I have since travelled with two Sheaffer Balances (original, not the IIs), one of them twice.

The first time, it leaked a lot, made a bit of a mess. I realised that it had been almost empty, and figured that this had something to do with it (lots of air ink the sac).

I thus filled them better for next time... much better results: on takeoff, a good amount of ink made its way into the feed, but not enough to seriously overwhelm it. I did sponge it off with a napkin, just to be on the safe side). On landing, whatever was there got sucked back in to the point that the pen was a bit dry (fixable by pulling the lever a bit :-)).

I did use the pens after takeoff, all was well.

I will try different ones next time. In particular, I'd like to see how Esties react.

I know, that's why I posted it here.

After reading several threads on how the "51" aerometric is possibly the safest pen to take on an aeroplane, it seemed the obvious choice for the journey. Before packing my inks, I checked the ink in the sac of my "51", and it was about 3/4 full, so I topped it off (another four squeezes as per the instructions on the filler).

When I went to Mexico earlier this summer, I took my newly acquired Vacumatic. During the flight I decided to make some notations on a book I was reading (this was before I stumbled on any of the traveling threads). It gushed a little bit, but nothing the little beverage napkin couldn't mop up, and I didn't receive any problems later.

I'll make sure to take my "51" along with my Waterman 55 next time I fly, to see how they perform.