Taking wet things through airport security
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 27 Jul, 2023
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So here is what happened. Many of the really small airports and legs didn’t have security at all. Domestic flights within Fiji or Vanuatu, for example, you could bring an arbitrarily large bottle of water, there was no xraying, etc.
In the places where there was the traditional security setup, (including the final MIA-YYZ leg involving TSA in the US) nobody ever reacted to my damp cooling scarf in an outer pocket of my carryon. Damp laundry and bathing suits were generally in checked luggage. There was also one domestic (security-free) flight which I boarded while wearing a wet bathing suit. No incident whatsoever. The answer to “how worried to be about this” seems to be “not at all.”
However in SCL I had an airside-purchased bottle of water confiscated on the jetway during boarding. So much for logic.
I doubt you’ll find any definitive rulings for this, so all we can do is apply common sense — although, as is well known, airport security often does not!
So: the 3-1-1 liquids rule applies to containers. Since any liquid within a wet swimsuit or damp towels/laundry is not “contained”, it’s unlikely to be subject to the rules. (Assuming you don’t have a quart of water sloshing about your swimwear bag, that is.)
The hydrogel cooling scarf thing is more borderline, since wet or not, hydrogel itself is a gel, which is arguably is contained within the scarf. So soaked or not, this could potentially be confiscated… although I suspect the form factor is sufficiently unusual that, unless it shows up on the X-ray, I doubt they would notice. (Shh! Don’t tell the terrorists!)
In any case, the last piece of TSA advice applies: “If in doubt, put your liquids, gels, aerosols, creams and pastes in checked baggage.”
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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