Travelers who have TSA PreCheck can tell you how having PreCheck membership can save time and energy. But it’s admittedly not for everyone. Those who don’t have PreCheck are not so-called “known travelers” and therefore can look forward to having to remove items from themselves and their bags after standing on the “regular” queue for, well, a significantly longer amount of time.
This tends to be the scenario:
You’ve just gotten to the airport with your family. You don’t fly very often, maybe about once a year. You’ve looked into PreCheck and if both you and your spouse got PreCheck, at $78 each, it’d be close to $160. Granted, that’s for 5 years but that’s also more than $30 per round-trip flight and since you don’t have any of the credit cards that’d reimburse you the cost, you just don’t think that’s worth it. But you did your research, so you’re prepared:
- Everyone is wearing slip-on shoes
- No one is wearing a belt
- Pockets were emptied before you got in line
- You’ve got one carry-on bag that’s holding everyone’s bags o’liquids and electronics
You get up to the scanner and the TSA agent tells you to remember to take all your snacks out of your bags.
Yep. I’ve seen person after person say how they had to empty all of the snacks in their carry on bag(s), when they had read the rules on TSA’s website before they flew and really weren’t expecting to have to go through all of that. So what’s going on?
According to TSA’s website:
Solid food items (not liquids or gels) can be transported in either your carry-on or checked baggage.
TSA officers may instruct travelers to separate items from carry-on bags such as foods, powders, and any materials that can clutter bags and obstruct clear images on the X-ray machine. Travelers are encouraged to organize their carry-on bags and keep them uncluttered to ease the screening process and keep the lines moving.
OK, so TSA may ask you to remove the snacks from your bag if they make it harder to see clear images on X-ray. Operative word of “may,” which would lead you to believe that it doesn’t happen very often.
But apparently a LOT of people at a LOT of airports are being asked to remove all of their snacks from their bags before they go through X-ray and have them go in a bin through X-ray, on their own (like how computer would go through). And if you don’t remove all your snacks (say you missed one) and whatever you neglected to remove causes issues with clarity of seeing all the stuff in your carry on when it goes through the scanner, your bag might have to go through enhanced inspection.
Awesomesauce.
Again, there’s nothing documented on TSA’s website that says it’s going to happen often, but that’s how it’s happening. Very often, people are being told asked to remove their snacks from their carry-on bags. Now granted, if all you have is a sandwich and a bag of chips, that won’t be very difficult. But if you’re going home from Walt Disney World and have gifts to buy for people, so you bought three dozen chocolate-covered Rice Krispie Treats in the shape of Mickey Mouse heads at the last second and put them into your carry on, it might take you more than a little extra time to pull those all out and put them all back.
Sign at Orlando Int’l Airport / PC: Christian Damon (R.I.P.)
Oh, and for the record, it happens MUCH less often at TSA PreCheck—another tally mark in the “worth it” category.
So what’s my advice? Well…
#1, don’t argue with them. They’re the TSA and, short of the people at the airline’s check-in desk, they’re the first people who are allowed to say you can’t board your plane if you cause a fuss. So don’t cause a fuss.
#2, plan how you pack your carry on. If you’ve got snacks in your bags (and especially if you have a lot of snacks in your bags), pack them so they’re ready and easily accessible if you’re told to remove all of your snacks from your bags.
#3, consider putting the snacks in your checked baggage. This might not be ideal with something melty, like chocolate, in the summertime, but perhaps some of your foods could be checked.
#4, perhaps you can mail your snacks and food home. This would depend on circumstances, especially comparing costs of shipping a bag of food home vs. checking another suitcase, but it’s another option.
#5, as I said, as of this writing, people in the TSA Pre-Check line generally aren’t being asked to pull all of their snacks out of their bags, so it’s just ONE MORE REASON to consider getting TSA-Pre-Check.
Of course, as the new scanners are introduced into more and more airports, this hopefully should be less and less of a problem. But until then…good luck!
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