From Malpensa to Fiumicino, the first steps toward clearing the way for liquids to board planes

More than a revolution, a kind of return to the past, thanks to technology, with a small but symbolic spillover to wine as well. But let us proceed in order. Since 2006, as anyone who travels frequently by air knows, international authorities have limited the amount of liquids that you can take on a plane in hand luggage to just 100 ml. For 17 years, basically, it has been impossible to carry a small bottle of water, let alone wine. Unless you decide to board it in the hold (with all the attendant risks) or buy it at duty free, where the choice is not always the most varied. All this, however, is set to change, because between 2024 and 2026 the ban, introduced as a security measure after the September 11, 2001 attacks, will end, at least in Europe.

And not because of an afterthought, but because of the technological upgrade of the scanners used at the gates, which will allow fast and reliable screening, without even having to open backpacks and pull out laptops and tablets anymore. The latest-generation equipment, which is already screening carry-on luggage at some terminals at Fiumicino, Linate and Malpensa airports, as well as London City Airport in London and Munich Airport, is equipped with X-ray computed tomography scanners that can reproduce the contents of trolleys and backpacks in 3D. Without the need to empty canteens and bottles.

Tourists, even those who choose Italy just for a weekend, or those who fly from one city to another on the Peninsula, will thus be able to take along the most coveted of souvenirs, a bottle of wine, without having to take it on board. But the novelty could also please those who move for business, obviously wine-related, flying and returning in a day to any European capital, often just for lunch, or dinner, even better if they can take along a couple of bottles of the latest vintage to present to the buyer of the day ...