With the final yr bringing quite a few key adjustments — together with an enforced Actual ID requirement and not needing to take off one’s footwear — a lot confusion round Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) insurance policies stays amongst vacationers and is usually unfold on the web.
This week, View from the Wing shared a video of a traveler stacking up bins after retrieving their objects from the scanner. The video went viral on a number of social media channels, reigniting debate about whether or not that is one thing vacationers are speculated to do.
“Always having to start a shift at security because no one cleanes [sic] up after themselves,” a content material creator working below the @currentdowns username wrote over a video of himself stacking a number of bins on the TSA belt.
Do you must stack bins at TSA screening? The web debates
Inside a couple of days of being posted on Dec. 26, the video gathered over 264,000 upvotes and tens of hundreds of feedback debating whether or not doing that is really the vacationers’ duty.
“Nothing bothers me more than people leaving the trays to pile up,” one commenter wrote beneath the video in a remark that obtained over 31,000 likes. Low-cost airline Ryanair additionally chimed in with a submit calling the unique poster “KING.”
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Whether or not the passenger is obligated to “help out” by stacking trays on this method stays an unresolved battle akin to seat reclining. The TSA has, nevertheless, beforehand weighed in, saying there isn’t a official rule, ABC Information reported.
Some airports have newer conveyor belts that routinely type the bins as soon as they attain the top of the belt, whereas at others, the brokers find yourself stacking them themselves and so might admire passengers who make their job simpler in any small method.
“As ex-TSA, thank you,” one other highly-upvoted remark beneath the unique video reads.
However as identified by others, the most important situation with deciding to be useful is that the TSA bins are a kind of objects not often thought-about “dirty,” however not really cleaned practically as usually as different elements of the airport.

TSA bins are touched by hundreds of vacationers earlier than they get cleaned.
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These TSA bins you wish to stack? One of many dirtiest issues you’ll be able to contact
“Rollaboard bags have been dragging on the ground, from the parking lot, through airports, and across destinations and then they go in these bins,” Gary Leff of aviation web site View From The Wing weighed in on the topic.
“People who may be sick are touching them, coughing on them. I don’t want to touch more of these bins than I have to! TSA employees get nitrile gloves, passengers don’t.”
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In January 2025, Frommer’s cited TSA agent Jauan Kenney’s TikTok submit to clarify to passengers, who might not have given the matter a lot thought, simply how soiled these bins could also be.
“So you put your vapes in a tray?” Kenney goes on to clarify why he all the time locations any stray objects that undergo the scanner both on or in a plastic bag. “Just know someone has probably stepped in dog s***. Someone stepped on the ground and put their shoes in a tray.”
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