Originally Posted by Bart
At baggage pods located behind the ticket counter, the airline ticket agent should place your lock inside a small plastic bag which is stapled to the luggage tag, and the agent writes a large letter L on the luggage tag to alert TSA screeners that the bag needs to be locked after it has been screened.
When I first read this I thought Bart had fallen in the same trap that almost everybody else has: Baggage is not only zippered bags but there are a lot of us that still use hard shell, Samsonite-type, bags. Yes, I know, we are a buch of oldies, but there is a large investment in those bags and they will stay with us until the airlines break them.
Then I saw this:
Originally Posted by Bart
Standard procedure for encountering a locked bag is to first attempt to open it with a set of standard luggage keys. For example, a Samsonite key will essentially open any Samsonite brand luggage, etc.
That's more like what it used to be pre 9/11 and I appreciate that there is someone in TSA that still knows about the master keys that will open (almost) all suit cases. I just hope that it is common knowledge and that we still can lock our hardshells.