Enhanced security tips for photographers at TSA airport checkpoints

This week, far sooner than anticipated, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began implementing new enhanced airport security procedures for electronics.

The new procedures, rolling out over the next few months at airports across the U.S., will enhance scrutiny of passengers' carry-ons, on both domestic and international flights. Travelers in standard TSA checkpoint lines will have to remove all electronics larger than cellphones from carry-on bags and place them in separate bins with nothing else above or below them, for X-ray screening.

Travelers in TSA PreCheck lines will be able to leave their large electronics in their bags as they do now with laptops.

Tripods according to TSA - Straight from D.C.

The rules and regulations about what items may not be carried into scheduled airlines' airplane cabins is definitive. TSA (Transportation Security Administration) lists items in their Prohibited Items List which are definitively banned.

It's to be expected TSA can't list everything which might be a good idea to prohibit. There are far too many items that travelers might take in their carry-ons, to think any group of people could possibly imagine them all or even most.

Unfortunately, when we try to use the list to evaluate if a questionable item would be permitted or prohibited, we find it's virtually impossible to use the list to predict what a TSA TSO (Transportation Safety Officer) will decide.

TSA policy change affects Tripods in carry-on

TSA Administrator John Pistole, speaking at a conference in New York on March 5, 2013, announced a major policy change for carry-on items beginning April 25, 2013. While it doesn't name tripods themselves, it clearly implies a change in attitude toward them being taken into airplane cabins in the US.

The details of the policy change were detailed in a statement on TSA's website. In the statement on Changes to the Prohibited Items List it says,

“Through TSA’s layered approach to security, and to align more closely with International Civil Aviation Organization standards, effective April 25, 2013 TSA will allow knives that do not lock, and have blades that are 2.36 inches or 6 centimeters or less in length and are less than 1/2 inch in width, novelty-sized and toy bats, billiard cues, ski poles, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and two golf clubs as part of their carry-on baggage. This is part of an overall Risk-Based Security approach, which allows Transportation Security Officers to better focus their efforts on finding higher threat items such as explosives.”

Camera Gear, Tripods, TSA, and the Airlines

TSA's (US Transportation Security Administration) website used to state, “You may carry on one (1) bag of photographic equipment in addition to one (1) carry-on and one (1) personal item through the screening checkpoint. The additional bag must conform to your air carrier’s carry-on restriction for size and weight.”

The problem is, since TSA was created, that was never true, nor is it today.

On both US domestic and international scheduled commercial flights, you are allowed no more than one carry-on and one personal item. The airlines haven't, nor do they expect to in the future, permit a third carry-on.