Winging it

For those that may be traveling soon, I thought I’d pass on my experience yesterday with the recent changes in what's allowed in carry-on bags. The lines to check luggage were extremely long, but the lines moved relatively fast. The good part of having more bags checked was people had less things that had to be scanned at the x-ray screening. That stage actually went extremely smooth. I don’t know if they focused on looking for liquids, etc.—announcements were continually played over the PA system, but I didn’t see anyone pulled aside to check for anything.

The other good thing about having more bags checked is that boarding went a lot faster. And there was a lot more room in the overhead bins for what was carried onboard. I’m sure over time people will eventually resume carrying more bags on board, but for now it was a nice change of pace.

I did get a few questions from various personnel about flight time, destination, etc. that I had never been asked before. And when you’ve been awake since 2am, I was less coherent than normal in my replies. But fortunately they didn’t peg me as a threat. So there’s my experience…hopefully travel later this week will be as smooth, and (if you have an upcoming trip) yours will be as well.

If you have any tips or tricks with the new system, pass them on!