You just went through airport security before your flight—so why do you have to do it all over again when you land?
If you’ve ever traveled internationally and have a connecting flight, you probably know the drill:
- Leave the country you’re visiting
- Arrive home
- Go through customs
- Pick up your bags
- Go through security again
So to clarify, until you get your checked bags back, no one besides airport/airline staff have touched them. And until you pick up your bags, you’ve remained airside the entire time. (So it’s not as if you’ve put something dangerous in your checked bag).
Why do you have to be so thoroughly checked again, if you were just checked in your country of origin?
Why You Still Have To Be Checked Again
Essentially, it comes down to different rules and different levels of trust.
Different rules
If we’re from the U.S. (most of our readers are), we have a good idea of TSA’s rules regarding what we can and can’t bring in our checked and carry-on bags.
However, each country has its own set of rules of what can and can’t be brought onto a plane, as well as what can be brought in checked and carry-on bags. For example:
- You might have certain foods – think along the lines of meats or produce – that are fine to transport out of your country of origin, but are illegal to be brought into the U.S. So the U.S. will want to ensure you don’t have, I dunno, Jamaican goat meat in your checked bag.
- Europe is in the middle of a bit of a back-and-forth over bringing liquids in containers larger than 100ml/3.4oz. So you may be able to bring a full-sized bottle of shampoo out of London City Airport in your carry-on. But once you arrive in the U.S. and are ready to connect at JFK, that shampoo bottle can’t be in your carry-on anymore. U.S. airports will want to double-check.
Different levels of trust
Unfortunately, an airport’s security is only as good as its security workers. And not all security workers are as thorough or as honest as one would hope. Cases in point:
- In the Philippines, there was the “bullet planting” scandal, where security officers were allegedly planting bullets in luggage, then extorting passengers.
- You could have a pocket knife in your carry-on that security in your country of origin just missed.
- In some places, corruption can also be a concern in order to allow items that shouldn’t be in your bags to pass through.
In any of those cases, the TSA would want to re-screen your bags, “just in case.”
Why There’s No Universal Standard
Unfortunately, there are no international agreements or other binding clauses to ensure that the airport security in one country is as good as that in another. So to ensure security for all flights, you and your bags must go through the scanners again, after your international flight, but before your connecting flight.
It may feel repetitive, but without a global standard for airport security, every country has to verify things on its own.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
