The Baggage Claim Scare That Made Me Start Locking My Bags

Linda's suitcase came off the carousel in Denver with the main zipper pull hanging open, three teeth of the track forced apart, and for about four seconds my stomach did something I don't want to feel again at baggage claim. Nothing was missing that we could find, not her hairdryer, not the extra shoes we'd packed for the trip out to see our daughter Julie. But somebody's hand, or something in the belly of that plane, had been on that zipper hard enough to force it open, and there was no way for us to know which. That suitcase is the reason a two pack of Master Lock 4689T TSA luggage locks has ridden in my bag on every trip since, and I'll tell you honestly what they do and what they don't.

I want to be careful with how I tell you this part, because I'm not the paranoid type and I don't believe every checked bag gets pawed through by a thief on the tarmac. Most of the time it's rough handling, bags getting tossed and stacked and dragged across belts by machines and tired workers moving a thousand pieces an hour, not people going through your things. But that four-second stomach drop stuck with me longer than it should have, and by the time we'd made it to Julie's place I'd already decided something had to change before our next trip.

My son Mark flies out of Nashville for work more than anyone else in our family, and when I told him about the zipper he laughed and said something like Dad, welcome to the club, because he'd apparently been locking his checked bags for years and never bothered to mention it. He walked me through it plainly. A TSA-approved lock isn't a vault. It won't stop somebody determined with the right tools, and it sure won't make a bag theft-proof, no honest person selling you one should ever tell you that it will. What it does is stop the casual stuff, somebody idly working a zipper open with their fingers because it was unlocked and easy, while a TSA agent can still get in through the lock itself with their own master key if they need to search the bag.

That was good enough for me. I wasn't chasing airtight security, I was chasing the kind of peace of mind where I don't spend a five-hour flight wondering what's happening to my bag in a cargo hold I can't see. So I picked up a two-pack of the Master Lock 4689T, the keyed version, mostly because I've never had much luck remembering combinations and didn't want to be the guy standing at baggage claim squinting at a dial.

The lock itself is about what you'd expect from a company I've bought padlocks from since before Linda and I were married. It's solid, small enough that it doesn't add any real weight to the bag, and each one ships with two keys, so I keep a spare on Linda's keyring in case mine ever goes missing at the bottom of a carry-on somewhere in an airport bathroom.

It's not a lock that stops a determined thief. It's a lock that stops the easy stuff, and most tampering is the easy stuff.

I locked both our checked bags for the first time on our next trip, the one out to Nashville to see Mark, and I'll admit I felt a little silly clipping a padlock through the zipper pulls in the middle of the ticket counter line while other folks walked past with bags wide open. That feeling didn't last. By the time we landed and I watched our bags come around the carousel with the locks sitting exactly where I'd put them, I understood what Mark had been telling me. It wasn't about drama. It was just one less thing to think about.

I put together the full rundown after four months of actually using these locks on real trips in my long-term review, if you want the details on how the lock held up and whether the keys ever gave me trouble. I also went back and wrote up the honest version with the small annoyances included, because I don't trust a review that doesn't mention any, in my honest review after a year of use.

A few people have asked me whether a keyed lock or a combination lock makes more sense for them, and the honest answer is it depends on whether you're the type who loses keys or forgets numbers. I laid out the tradeoffs in my keyed versus combination comparison. And if you want the step by step on getting a TSA lock set up right the first time, including where to actually clip it so it doesn't snag at the security checkpoint, I wrote that up in how to secure checked luggage with a TSA lock.

If you're still on the fence about whether it's worth the small habit change, I'd read through the reasons a TSA lock is worth carrying before your next trip. None of them promise your bag can't be gotten into by somebody who really wants in. They just explain why most people never have to find that out for themselves.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you asked me straight across the kitchen table whether you need one of these, here's what I'd actually tell you. It's cheap insurance against the boring, common stuff, not the movie-plot stuff. Zippers get worked loose or bags get gone through by somebody just checking for something easy to grab, and a lock takes that option off the table without costing you anything at security, since TSA can still open it with their own key. It won't stop somebody who's determined and has real tools, and I'd never tell you otherwise. But for the ordinary tampering that actually happens, the kind that left Linda's zipper hanging open in Denver, it's done exactly what I hoped it would do. Two years in, I haven't had a single scare like that one again, and that alone is worth the few dollars and thirty seconds it takes to clip one on before you check a bag.