Laptops and Airport Screening

Could I have been less smart? (Don't answer.) I'm an experienced international traveler. I've taken my laptop out of my backpack so screeners can x-ray it at airport security, and divested myself of shoes, belt, change, cell phone, coat/and-or vest/and-or hoodie, and carefully-packed hodge podge of liquids and gels, and repacked it all/re-dressed in lightning time at the end of the security screening area, about one bazillion times (while stuffing my boarding pass in the waistband of my temporarily falling-off pants, as -- silly Mother Nature -- I have not expediently got four hands). When I did it this last week in Orlando, FL, though, I left my laptop behind.

It's my own fault -- it seemed I was (I wasn't) smuggling along a lighter (which I actually have accidentally done before and lost my treasured Swiss Army compass/lighter as a result)-- thus, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration*) screening guy had to pull my bag off the line and start rooting for it. While this (friendly) ransacking was transpiring, I got involved in conversation with the TSA guy -- my mind wandered, and I wandered off without my laptop.

Since then, I've been considering the whole airport screening rules thing again (which I do every time I travel, sometimes with resignation, sometimes with moderate-to-severe grouchiness). I know all about packing for airport security -- I write about it. I know why I am asked to take my shoes off and send them through the xray machine while I pad through the metal detector in my socks -- a failed shoe bombing of 2002 (and I learned at the George Bush airport in Houston that if you don't take 'em off, it's the wand for you). I know why I have to now pack my liquids and gels into three ounce containers (unquestionably now the most time consuming part of my packing) and cram those into a quart sized plastic bag -- the strange 2006 alleged something-or-other in London. And as for metal -- well, yeah, metal detectors.

Why do we have to take laptops out of our bags at US airport security? Well, I had to look it up. Aside from the obvious (could obscure something else metallic in a bag, like a big knife), there's this: apparently, the 1989 (yes, 18 years ago) bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland involved explosives in a boombox, and all electronic devices carried aboard planes subsequently came under fire, with laptops bearing the brunt of the security screening scrutiny. According to Slate, travel life with laptops did ease up until 9/11 happened, at which time laptops again started getting the hairy eyeball airport security treatment, and travelers left an "unprecedented" number of laptops behind at airport screening. No alternate solutions for laptop-carriers have emerged in the interim than taking the thing out and putting it in a bin at security. Does that mean, since this is 2007, we'll still be packing liquids and gels into three ounce containers in 2025? History would say it's so.

In the meantime, I scouted the lost and found number for the Orlando airport, learned my laptop was there (wow, because if you leave something behind at security, it's fair game for being truly lost, tossed or going to TSA auction) and can pay $59 to get it back next weekend, $230 if I want it sooner. Of course I do.

I'd add up what I've spent on US-bound airport security (tossing lattes and water bottles, buying travel sized liquids and gels or buying toothpaste and shampoo in-country, etc.) in the UK, Mexico, Europe and Australia in the last year, but I might get depressed. I'd have to start with the foreign change I sometimes drop in a carry-on bag pocket to make life easier at security, forget about, and then consequently bring home: many bucks' worth of euros, pounds and pesos. For now, I'll review my own advice on airport rules and how to pack:

• How to Pack for Airport Security
• Airport Rules
• Where to Find Travel Sized Liquids and Gels
• How to Prepare for Air Travel

And perhaps I could volunteer to help the people who actually do the airport work to find screening-area tables of matching heights to scoot my laptop over -- a lot of them, so we all have enough room to get dressed post-screening. In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy the conversations TSA guys have among themselves while sifting through my stuff ("Hey, look at this cool lighter!").

Related: How to Avoid Lost Luggage | How to Pack Light for Long Travel | How to Prepare for Air Travel

*The TSA is a US government entity created after September 11, 2001's terrorist attacks in the US, and is, among other things, in charge of creating policies to make traveling in the US with items that the Department of Homeland Security, created in November, 2002, declares to be contraband more difficult. Learn more.