Yeahhh! It’s a party with the TSA! (Via Facebook)

Of the myriad things you can and cannot bring past an airport security checkpoint these days, most people seem to acknowledge that unsealed beverage containers are near the top of the list. It’s an onerous, bothersome restriction, especially if, say, you’re catching an early-morning flight and are still working your way through that first cup of coffee until some blue-shirt barks at you to dump it out. Still, them’s the rules.

But one flyer queuing through a Transportation Security Administration line at Dulles International Airport yesterday tried to polish off something a bit stronger. Captured on camera by another passenger, one woman raced to empty her 1.75-liter bottle of Smirnoff vodka.

And while the person who took the photo wrote on Facebook that the TSA agents minding the line looked less than impressed with the impromptu vodka shots, the agency says it was not their place to take any law-enforcement action.

“Often times you’ll see people finish their sodas or waters before security,” says Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the TSA. “I think what makes this different is that they were trying to finish something else.”

Farbstein says the woman, who alternated between drinking and offering other flyers a swig, would have been under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

But MWAA spokesman Rob Yingling says there were no arrests at Dulles yesterday matching the scene’s description. Still, he says slugging hard liquor before passing through airport security is an unwise idea.

“Public intoxication is an arrestable offense in an airport because of the risk it poses to a departing flight,” he says.

This is why airplanes sell those little bottles on board.