In a public radio commentary last week, I pointed out that the TSA’s new liquids and gels policy had a serious flaw: passengers who bought something past in a secure area could have the item confiscated on a stopover.
My critics dismissed this as a hypothetical scenario.
Passengers, however, had a different take.
“Yesterday morning we were flying from Dublin to Minneapolis via O’Hare on American Airlines,” one reader wrote from St. Paul, Minn. “We were at the airport early, so we were browsing the duty-free shop and decided to buy a bottle of vodka. They gave us the receipt and we picked it up at the plane door and put it in our carry on bag. We deplaned and went through customs at O’Hare and had to go from the international terminal to Terminal 3, which entailed going through security again.”
That’s about as far as her bottle got.
“TSA informed us that they had to take the liquid from our carry-on and confiscate it because of airline regulations prohibiting liquids,” she wrote, adding, “There is a glitch in the system somewhere. They sell it to you on one hand and give it to you after you have gone through the last ‘liquid check’ in the jetway, plus they were selling ‘duty-free perfumes’ on the plane to the passengers.”
There were three other Dublin Duty Free shop bags in the TSA garbage, so my informant believes hers wasn’t an isolated incident.
The new TSA policy is as absurd as the late night comedy shows make it look.
It’s time to drop the ban on gels and liquids.
Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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