Air passengers cramming ever more stuff into ever larger carry-ons in hopes of evading airline baggage fees are running afoul airport security.
A lot of travelers these days are finding themselves caught between a rock and the TSA.
Unwilling to pay anywhere from $19 to $35 to check one piece of luggage (and the fees go up with successive bags), many travelers are trying get around the fees by bringing more and ever larger carry-on bags instead.
There is a tradeoff, however, and there’s a good chance you’ll run head-long into it at the security check.
First, if the bag doesn’t fit through the X-ray machine, it’ll have to be inspected by hand. And after the TSA screeners thoroughly dismantle your careful packing job, you’ll have to repack it yourself.
Further, the bag itself may ended being swiped with chemical-laden swabs to test for the presence of explosives.
Even if your carry-on does fit through the X-ray machine, that’s no guarantee of smooth sailing, especially if you’ve crammed enough stuff into it to sustain you through two weeks in Madagascar.
Why? Because the X-ray machine has a hard time reading the contents of bags that are tightly, densely packed. And if the screeners don’t feel they’re seeing everything clearly, that means a hand screening.
At the very least, this means delays and annoyance. In the worst case, you could end up missing your flight.
So essentially, you have two choices, either pay the airlines’ baggage extortion…uhh, I mean fees…or dance with the TSA. Which is the better option?
The answer depends on which you can more easily afford — the expense or the aggravation. If you do opt for the total carry-on approach, however, I have one piece of advice for you:
Get thee to the airport EARLY.
If you’re knowingly adopting packing tactics that are all but guaranteed to draw you extra attention from the TSA, you can’t afford to arrive at the airport just in the nick of time, especially on a peak day day, when the security lines are long — and the screeners’ patience is short.
So I learned the hard way this fall that airlines also have weight restrictions for carry on bags and some do actually enforce those limits. I was leaving Bogota, Colombia with a nicely crammed bag and when I showed my boarding pass and passport, the agent weighed my bag. I was a good 7lbs over. She would not let me go any further until the bag weight was <= 30lbs. So I stepped out of line tossed a few magazines and held my 5 lb laptotp in my hands on the next pass through. She let me through and I repacked my bag at the counter and was on my way.