Originally Posted by
Darby
I normally travel with a banker box of books in my checked baggage. Without fail every single trip in the US the boxes are opened by TSA and some books end up damaged due to poor repacking. Strangely, when I fly in Europe I have never noticed security having this fetish and have never had books damaged. So what is this issue with TSA?
Must....resist....snarky.....comment....trying.... to..
because they've never seen one before
because they believe people who can read, since they are "different" must be terrorists
because the pen is mightier than the sword, and they want to ensure you don't intend to destroy the aircraft with all of those products of the pen.
Sorry, had to get that out of my system.
If I had to take a serious guess, I'd say all of that paper stacked up presents an obstacle that enough of the x-ray photons can't penetrate. While I cba to estimate the HVL calculations, I'm guessing they can't see "through" the books and as such they open up the baggage for a visual inspection of them.
This actually seems legitimate to me for checked baggage. That does not, however, excuse treating them poorly during repackaging.