The Water Bottle Rule May Not Survive the Winter

The Transportation Security Administration is weighing whether to allow TSA PreCheck passengers to carry full water bottles through security checkpoints at selected airports over the next several months. Senior administration officials described the plan to CBS News, saying the allowance would begin at airports equipped with newer computed tomography scanners whose automated detection capabilities can distinguish water from other liquids and flag potential threats. It would be the most consequential softening of the liquids regime since it was imposed nearly two decades ago.

The caveats matter as much as the headline. TSA is not prepared to eliminate restrictions on all liquids, and the existing 3-1-1 rule requiring carry-on liquids to sit in containers of 3.4 ounces or less remains fully in effect. Nothing changes at the checkpoint today. What is under consideration is a narrow carve-out for water specifically, for PreCheck passengers specifically, at airports that already have the right generation of scanning equipment installed and running in automated mode.

Money is the constraint. While the technology to scan full bottles of liquid exists and is deployed at a growing number of American checkpoints, TSA has not acquired it at anything close to the scale needed for a nationwide rollout, even one limited to PreCheck lanes. No funding is currently available for the project. That means any change would arrive unevenly, airport by airport, and travellers would face the familiar problem of a rule that applies in one terminal and not the next – the same patchwork that has surrounded shoe removal and laptop rules for years.

The deliberation follows a run of changes at the checkpoint. TSA recently launched Gateside by TSA PreCheck, a program allowing people without airline tickets to pass through security into secure terminal areas at 13 United States airports, reviving a pre-2001 practice of walking companions to the gate. Taken together, the two moves suggest an agency willing to trade some long-standing blanket restrictions for screening decisions made by machine, provided the machines are in place and funded.

Sources: TravelPulse, CBS News