TSA’s new smaller baggage scanner flap is misdirected

Christopher Elliott

Submitted photo/MICHAEL CAIRNS

The government is already in the fee business. It just works the back office instead of the checkpoint. Airlines are allowed to advertise a fare that bears little resemblance to what you'll pay. A bag costs extra. A seat assignment costs extra. Even sitting next to your own child can cost extra. Washington blesses this shell game by letting carriers keep those fees out of the advertised price. … That's the scandal. Not a scanner with a snug tunnel.”

OPINION — Does the Transportation Security Administration want to measure your luggage? You might be forgiven for thinking so after an aviation blog breathlessly reported that the agency's new 3D scanners have smaller entry tunnels than the old X-ray machines.

An oversize carry-on might not fit through, the report warned. Screeners could send you back to the airline counter to check it.

That's all it took for travelers to connect the dots. The TSA would become the airlines' enforcer, catching every overpacked carry-on and converting it into a $45 checked-bag fee.

The government is working the squeeze for corporate America.

But it's a textbook case of decoy outrage, when a fake scandal soaks up all the anger a real one deserves.

The real scandal here isn't about a scanner. It's that the government already helps airlines pick your pocket — legally, every single day.

A few facts about the scanners

The technology isn't new. TSA began testing computed-tomography scanners at Phoenix Sky Harbor and Boston Logan airports in 2017. The rollout has been slow and steady. In March 2022, TSA awarded Analogic a $781 million contract for as many as 938 CT systems, and in 2023 it ordered another $1.3 billion worth of scanners. Roughly 634 units were installed by that spring, and TSA adds more every year.

Yes, the tunnels are smaller. TSA says so itself, and advises travelers to ask a screener for help rather than force a bag through. But there's no algorithm flagging a suitcase that's an inch too wide. If your bag fits through the machine and passes screening, it flies.

Here's what you won't find: any documented wave of passengers being turned away at checkpoints and marched back to the ticket counter to pay up. It isn't happening.

So the scanner panic is a non-story. The question it accidentally raises is not.

Here's the real fee machine

Should the government help airlines collect more fees from passengers? Of course not. A security checkpoint exists to stop dangerous items from boarding a plane, not to help an airline hit its quarterly ancillary revenue targets. Turning a federal employee into the baggage police would be a misallocation of public resources.

But in a meaningful sense, the government is already in the fee business. It just works the back office instead of the checkpoint.

Airlines are allowed to advertise a fare that bears little resemblance to what you'll pay. A bag costs extra. A seat assignment costs extra. Even sitting next to your own child can cost extra. Washington blesses this shell game by letting carriers keep those fees out of the advertised price.

The numbers are staggering. U.S. airlines collected a record $7.4 billion in baggage fees in 2025, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Southwest ended its 50-year “bags fly free” policy last year, closing the last escape hatch. By early 2026, a first checked bag runs about $45 at the major carriers.

And when regulators tried something modest — requiring airlines to disclose fees upfront — the industry's trade group sued, arguing the Transportation Department had exceeded its authority.

That's the scandal. Not a scanner with a snug tunnel. A pricing system engineered to hide the true cost of flying, operating with the government's tacit approval.

What Washington should do

If we're going to be angry at the government about luggage, let's be angry at the right thing.

Congress should require that every airfare include at least one carry-on and one checked bag. A suitcase is not an ancillary product. It's part of the travel experience. Almost nobody flies without at least a carry-on item. Bundle the bag back into the ticket, and the incentive to overstuff a carry-on disappears. And I'm willing to bet the TSA screening line will move faster as a result.

Regulators should also mandate all-in price advertising. The fare you see should be the fare you pay. It should also include the ability to reserve a seat rather than wait until you check in to get a leftover middle seat.

None of this requires new scanners. All you need is a spine.

Decoy outrage is comfortable. It gives you a convenient villain: a machine that can't argue back. But the real thing takes more work.

A scanner can find a water bottle buried under two weeks of laundry. Finding the $45 buried in your airfare is up to you, because Washington certainly isn't looking.

Christopher Elliott is an author, consumer advocate and travel expert. Reach him at chris@elliott.org. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.