And then this: Traveling with an avalanche airbag
If you have an avalanche airbag and need to fly to your destination, you can carry it in your checked baggage as well as cabin luggage according to the IATA rules. Either way, the canister must be unscrewed and capped and transported together with the airbag.
Which is quite strange when you take your bag as cabin luggage, as you are not even allowed to bring a jar of peanut butter on you! At Schiphol, the security guy also found it very suspicious and initially wouldn’t allow it. His eyes were on bomb alarm when he saw the canisters and he almost asked us if we were out of our mind. We showed him the IATA rules (printed in advance) and asked for the manager. His supervisor luckily did know the rules and let us go through.
Airlines even prefer that you take your airbag as cabin luggage instead of checked baggage because the pressure inside the cabin of the aircraft is better regulated than in the hold and they therefore expect less problems with the canister, which, after all, is also under pressure.
Most important is that the airbag has been pre-registered and accepted by the airline. This was also checked, both at Schiphol and in Calgary.
Unfortunately, this procedure does not work on flights to the US. Canisters are not allowed there at all so you will have to arrange something on your destination.
Little bit of a disclaimer: We both use the Mammut Snowpulse triggered by wire. What the rules are for an ABS, which is blown via a small triggered explosion, we don’t know.