- 7 hours ago
Airport security can be confusing even for seasoned travelers. In this video, we gathered TSA agents to reveal what really happens behind the checkpoint, the secrets that could change how you travel and what they wish every passenger knew before reaching the X-ray machine.
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00:00I think if we reveal everything that goes behind the scenes, people, we scared to fly.
00:05If you are flying anywhere from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. in any given airport, good luck.
00:13I'm Quay, and I've been with TSA for four and a half years.
00:16Six years.
00:17Eight years.
00:18Oh my God.
00:19Amazing things you will see.
00:21There's so much more that TSA does than what passengers see at the checkpoint.
00:25I know there's a love-hate relationship between, you know, officers and the travelers, but I just want travelers to
00:31understand that TSA is there for your safety.
00:34When you become a TSA officer, we go to Atlanta for about two weeks and pretty much run through everything
00:42that you see at a typical airport.
00:44It's like our college, TSA college.
00:47We're all sworn in before we start, so we all took enough to do our jobs and do it right.
00:51You know, most of us aren't there just for the paycheck.
00:53We actually, you know, feel like we're doing something and keeping people safe.
00:59I used to work 4 a.m. to 12.30, and y'all put us through it.
01:05Like, 4 a.m., we're, like, hustling and bustling.
01:08They're like, oh, I just woke up.
01:09Okay, what you think we just did?
01:11Nobody's listening in the morning, and they're just trying to get to their flights, which we're just trying to help
01:16you get through and be safe.
01:17The one piece of advice that I would give to everyone, leave two hours early if you're flying domestic and
01:24three hours early for international.
01:26Anything can happen within that hour at security alone.
01:30I don't wish anything bad on anyone, but there are some times where people cut it real close.
01:34I'm like, you know what?
01:35I hope you don't make it to your flight because you were a**hole.
01:37To all you line cutters out there, please be patient.
01:40You cutting the line is going to have someone in a blue shirt and a badge yell at you and
01:45probably make your whole time through TSA much harder.
01:48People, when they go to the airport, I swear they, when they're at home, they unscrew the top of their
01:52heads, take out their brain, leave it at home, out the door, and you swear.
01:56Can I have your ID?
01:58What are my shoes?
01:58And you could tell someone 10,000 times, don't do this, and you're watching them do it.
02:02The best attire to come to the airport with is form-fitting, maybe athleisure.
02:08Anything that's not conforming to the body is going to result in an alarm.
02:12I can't tell you how many people have come through with cargos and the chains and extra pockets, and you're
02:17going to get a groin alarm.
02:19We're going to have to pat you down in a sensitive area.
02:21I don't want to do it.
02:22You don't want it done to you.
02:26I can tell you the difference between an HP laptop and a MacBook.
02:30You don't understand how difficult that is.
02:32The thing with TSA is that, for the most part, they're very reactive, so every rule is in place for
02:36something that has already happened.
02:37Something that really surprised me was the amount of liquid that it takes to, like, make serious damage on, like,
02:44an aircraft.
02:45The 3-1-1 rule is basically gels, liquids, and aerosols over 3.4 ounces are not allowed to go
02:50into your carry-on, but this is where everyone goes wrong.
02:53They think that, okay, my Fenty fat water toner, just because in the actual bottle there's, like, a little pinch,
03:03I could take it.
03:03You need to transfer that over to a 3.4 ounce bottle because TSA doesn't look at what's inside of
03:09the bottle.
03:10They look at the actual ounce of the bottle.
03:12Things like cream cheese, jelly, applesauce, like, things like that also count as liquid.
03:19So the idea is, like, anything you can drink, things you can spread, it's, like, in the same family.
03:24More people are starting to freeze their liquids.
03:27You can definitely do that.
03:28You can freeze your soup.
03:29At that point, it's no longer liquid.
03:31Some people came from, I'm guessing Italy, they had some tomato sauce.
03:36They didn't have it in a duty-free bag, so it wasn't able to go.
03:39They were like, oh, you guys are going to take it, so I want you to open the sauce and
03:44throw it in the garbage.
03:46So I opened the sauce and I throw it in the garbage.
03:50But then also there was, I guess, an employee.
03:53They were in the garbage, I guess, cleaning it or whatever, and her whole uniform had the sauce on it.
03:59It was crazy.
04:00We don't want your items.
04:01We don't even know what's in the item, so why would we take the item that goes straight into the
04:07garbage?
04:07When things get confiscated, the trash isn't the only option.
04:10You can have somebody who dropped you off come and meet you and take said item.
04:15You would have to request for us to put it to the side so that either somebody can grab it
04:23or you can request a supervisor
04:26and request that the supervisor takes your mailing address and said item and mails it to that mailing address.
04:34I have never seen anybody utilize this option, but it is an option as long as it's not a gun,
04:39knife, or a bomb.
04:40Let me just make that clear.
04:41If you want to know if your diamond rings or your chains or whatever you have is real and authentic,
04:47send it through a TSA x-ray because if it doesn't get pulled, it's fake.
04:51A woman put her dog through the x-ray before.
04:54I don't know if she thought that she was supposed to.
04:57It looks so crazy on the x-ray.
05:01You don't want to see a poor animal on the machine.
05:03Please do not put your animal through the machine.
05:05That has happened.
05:06It is so dangerous.
05:07So much radiation inside the x-ray.
05:08To this day, I'm concerned about all those poor animals that went through the machine.
05:14The body scanner is just a body scanner.
05:17We cannot see your underwears.
05:19We cannot see your bones.
05:20It doesn't penetrate your body.
05:22It kind of just makes a digital map of what a human body should look like
05:26and looks for anything out of the ordinary, like something in your pocket or your wallet
05:30that I told you to take out six times.
05:32That's still in there.
05:32One guy who was trying to convince us that the body scanner was giving off gamma radiation.
05:39My partner that was with me was like, like the Hulk?
05:42And he with the most serious face was like, exactly.
05:46And we were like, okay, let's have a meeting on the other side of the machine.
05:50I don't try to convince people to get into the machine because it's up to you what you want
05:56to do with your body.
05:57The machine has radio waves, less radio waves that are in your cell phone
06:02and way less that are on the plane you're about to go sit on.
06:05Everyone swears they're going to take off their jewelry.
06:07I've had a gentleman a few weeks ago lose his wedding band.
06:10Why he took it off, I don't know, but he lost it and he came back to us.
06:14And I told him, hey, it's going to be you sleeping on the couch, not me, my friend.
06:17We always tell you, make sure you clear your pockets before you go to the body scanner.
06:20Didn't clear his pockets.
06:21He went to the body scanner, told him he has to go back and clear his pockets.
06:25So he took out a boiled egg, a cooked egg.
06:27It was de-shelled.
06:30He's like, oh, what do I do with it?
06:31And so we're like, what do you want to do with it?
06:34Do you want to keep it?
06:35And he's like, yeah.
06:35So he just puts it in the bin, no tissue, no plastic or anything.
06:39So it's rolling around through the x-ray and I get to the other side and I see him
06:43when he gets out the body scanner and he goes to get his stuff and he takes the egg
06:47and he just eats it and we're like, oh my God.
06:50Wow, amazing things you will see.
06:52You know, when you're going through the body scanner and TSA officers want to see your
06:56hair and you're like, I can't possibly hide anything in my hair.
06:59Yes, you can.
07:01Braids, ponytails, you'll be surprised what you find.
07:04We found someone, a woman, and she was so sweet.
07:07I was so surprised that she was doing this.
07:09She had a shank up in there and her ponytail.
07:12When someone's like randomly selected, is that really random?
07:15There's two different kinds, actually.
07:17The most frequent one that you see is when you walk through the metal detector and they tell you
07:21to basically get out because you're randomly selected.
07:23Yes, that is totally random.
07:24I promise we don't have like a little button, you know, in our back pockets pressing it waiting
07:28for you to come through.
07:29The other is when you swear you have pre-checked, you paid for it, you put it on your boarding
07:33pass,
07:34but today you're standard.
07:35Sometimes, maybe you share a name with someone that probably maybe shouldn't be flying.
07:40Maybe you look something up that's kind of, you know, sketch on the internet on your way to the
07:44airport.
07:44You're being screened from the moment you buy your ticket, your flight, up until you land at your
07:50destination.
07:50So there's always some kind of cyber security background thing going on, even if you're not
07:54on the plane yet.
07:58When an officer is going into your bag and they're looking for a specific item, even though you may
08:03know what it is, try to refrain from telling the officer, I know what it is, I'm going to go
08:07and
08:07get it myself.
08:08That's going to actually make them upset and probably go much slower than they were going to go before.
08:14If your bag is pulled, that wasn't by an accident and it's not for you to reach over and grab
08:19your
08:19bag and walk off.
08:21We have to make sure that it's clear, that there's nothing dangerous in there.
08:24If not, the whole terminal has to get dumped if we can't find that passenger.
08:29Everyone, passengers, workers, janitors, everybody has to leave and get re-scanned.
08:35Planes have started boarding everybody off the plane.
08:39Like it gets that serious and we don't go home until everybody's re-screened.
08:45So that's like mandatory overtime.
08:48Return your bins at the end.
08:50One of the most frustrating things that travelers used to say is, that's not my job to do.
08:54So what I used to do when I was working at TSA and I'll see those bins start accumulating
08:59at the end, I'll just watch them.
09:01And we watching each other at this point because I'm like, okay, the reason this conveyor belt
09:05isn't moving is because you guys are not returning your bins.
09:07How often are those bins cleaned?
09:12Girl, I would say no comment.
09:15I don't know.
09:16Your guess is as good as mine.
09:18It's not my job.
09:20I try not to lose like my sense of, I guess, humanity.
09:24We only see you guys when you're coming through for two or three minutes.
09:26But I'm worried that each person is going through, you know, an entire lifetime of things.
09:31TSA gets a bad rap, but we're human and we don't make the rules.
09:34We just enforce them and we're doing it all for your safety.