Et Tu, TSA

David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on

Et Tu, TSA? The Ides Of March 2026

From Caesars Fees to Airport Theater

Travel has a way of revealing what an industry really thinks of its customers. Not in the glossy ads, not in the loyalty program brochures, and not in the smiling language about service and convenience. You find it in the little things – the extra fee nobody warned you about, the unnecessary line, the bag inspection that makes no sense, the shrug that tells you this is simply how it is now. Heading home from Las Vegas today, I was reminded yet again that the modern travel experience is less about hospitality than endurance.

This trip took me to “Caesars Forum” for a conference. It was not my first conference in Las Vegas – anyone who reads me knows better than that – but it was my first time at this particular venue. Caesars Forum is a giant convention box sitting under the High Roller and nowhere near Caesars Palace, despite the name encouraging exactly that assumption. It is disconnected from almost anything else a normal human being might want to do. It is not cozy, not charming, and not woven into the Strip in any intuitive way. It is just a large, detached facility with very little personality and almost none of the embedded conveniences you would want in a convention venue. No meaningful restaurant options inside, no real concessions to speak of, no private suites, no sense that this was designed to be anything more than a box for putting trade shows in.

Las Vegas has plenty of conference venues that could have hosted this particular event well. This was not one of them.

To be fair, Caesars Forum does have a covered walkway connected to the Linq and Harrah’s, and that part at least was useful. I stayed at the Linq for the first time, and the experience was a mixed bag. The conference paid for my room because I was there as a presenter and moderator, but the property still charged me personally $25 to check in at noon. So the room was ready, the room was already covered under the master agreement, but because I preferred not to stand around until 4:00 PM staring into space, Caesars found a way to monetize my existence anyway. That is a good way to guarantee I do not book any Caesars property myself in the future.

The room itself was fine. Clean enough. A small fridge, which mattered. A tiny desk/shelf pretending to be workspace. A bathroom with a walk-in shower. Perfectly acceptable, if not memorable. The daily walk to the venue, however, was more substantial than it sounds when people casually call it “connected.” It meant up two escalators, down a corridor, up two more escalators, past the monorail, then back down the corresponding escalators into the Forum complex. Convenient by Las Vegas standards, perhaps, but still a schlep.

Then again, I was ahead of many attendees and exhibitors, because I understood before arriving that Caesars Forum was separate from Caesars Palace and nowhere near the hotel people naturally assume it belongs to. Plenty of people apparently made lodging, dining, and event-planning decisions based on the very understandable but very wrong assumption that the conference was happening at Caesars itself. The confusion was real enough that this conference has already announced it will not be returning there next year, opting instead for the MGM Grand.

That will probably be better. At least MGM puts rooms, restaurants, concessions, and conference infrastructure within the same general orbit. Yes, I remember full well that the MGM convention space is hardly next to the elevators either. That walk can feel like a journey undertaken with supplies and a support team. But still, there is something to be said for holding a conference in a property that functions like an integrated property and not like an annex somebody remembered to connect later. It also does not hurt that it will not be another venue in the Caesars chain, which never found a corner it could not cut or a fee it would not charge.

But all of that faded pretty quickly once I headed to the airport to go home, because the return trip reminded me that the biggest contrast of this journey was not convention center versus convention center. It was airport versus airport.

Comparing Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, formerly McCarran, with my home airport of Newark is not just jarring. It is illuminating. It is also a little unsettling. It really is a tale of two cities.

Start with check-in and bag drop.

At Newark, the best word I can come up with for how passengers are treated is tolerated. Not welcomed. Not valued. Not even especially processed efficiently. Tolerated. Newark terminal C no longer has a dedicated bag-drop experience for elite flyers as I explained in this recent blog. Everybody waits in line. Everybody. It is a relatively recent change, and it is a completely stupid one. What today made clear is that this is not some systemwide United policy. It is a United at Newark problem.

At Harry Reid this morning, I walked up to an empty Premier Access desk and was helped immediately. No confusion, no cattle call, no standing in a general line wondering why loyalty to an airline has become indistinguishable from holding a number at the deli counter. And this was not some quiet Tuesday morning with nobody traveling. Las Vegas had two major conferences ending, plus the usual weekend traffic building behind them. This was not an airport having an easy day. This was an airport operating as though efficiency and courtesy were still part of the job.

That alone would have been enough to make the comparison unflattering for Newark. But then came security.

Anyone who reads my writing knows I have no great love for the TSA. I do feel bad for the rank-and-file employees who have been caught in political nonsense due to the criminal actions of the ICE thugs that took far too long to be reigned-in by congress. Pulling ICE / DHS funding unfortunately means the TSA people are temporarily not being paid…again…which never has a good result. But sympathy for the workers does not magically transform the operation into a model of competence. Too often, it still feels like an agency performing theater and not security.

Today at LAS, I was the only person using the TSA touchless PreCheck line. I walked right in, put my briefcase and other belongings on the belt, watched them pass through the scanner, collected them on the other side, and went to the gate. That was it. It was exactly how a modern airport security process should work for a known traveler with PreCheck and Global Entry.

That would not be noteworthy if Newark did not behave so differently.

When I go through security at EWR with that same briefcase carrying the same items, the odds are probably better than 90 percent that they will tear the thing apart. Out come the wires. Out come the chargers. Out comes the laptop gear and every assorted piece of electronics that anyone who travels for work – especially anyone in technology – routinely carries. They disassemble neatly packed items, spread them around in trays, and send them back through again as if they have uncovered some deeply suspicious plot involving power bricks and USB cables. Then, after the crack team confirms that the power supplies are in fact power supplies, the wires are wires, and the notebook computer is not an exotic threat vector, they hand it all back strewn around a tray and say, “Have a nice day.”

At Newark, they have even removed the tables and benches next to the screening stations that used to let passengers repack after these little exercises in procedural overkill. So now you gather your half-unpacked life, carry it across the hall, and try to reassemble your belongings on the new tiny benches while the rest of the airport surges around you.

Which raises the obvious question – which airport is doing it right?

I do not believe LAS has some advanced scanner technology that EWR lacks. I do not think LAS is relying on magic while EWR is using an X-ray machine that came free with a box of cereal. These airports are presumably operating from the same broad TSA framework. Which means one of two things has to be true. Either EWR is being unnecessarily strict, overzealous, and frankly absurd, or LAS is being too lax. Both cannot be correct.

And that’s where this stops being merely irritating and becomes concerning.

Consistent security inconsistency is not reassuring. If one airport sees the exact same bag and decides it requires a full disassembly while another waves it through without hesitation, that does not inspire confidence in either one. It suggests that what passengers experience may have less to do with actual risk and more to do with local habits, local management, or whichever TSA team happens to be working that checkpoint. That is exactly the kind of inconsistency The TSA was supposed to eliminate after 9/11. The whole point of creating the TSA was to remove weak spots and establish a more uniform standard. Security is not supposed to be an area where your mileage may vary.

Maybe this is just Las Vegas being Las Vegas. Maybe a city already well practiced at annoying visitors with resort fees, parking charges, inflated food costs, and casino economics has decided the airport is the one place where it will go easy on departing customers. Maybe after picking your pocket in a dozen creative ways all week, the city throws you a final courtesy and lets you leave with your dignity and your briefcase intact. That would actually be very on-brand for Vegas. Gouge the customers at every stage, then let them breeze through security as a closing gesture of goodwill.

Cute theory, but it also points to the larger problem. The TSA was created specifically to prevent inconsistent local approaches from becoming vulnerabilities.

At some point, this kind of disparity needs to be addressed. My guess is that nothing will happen until something forces it. Either another aviation incident – God forbid – or some passenger at Newark finally loses patience, loses their temper, gets arrested, and drags the matter into court, forcing someone to explain why the same traveler with the same credentials and the same bag is treated so differently depending on which airport he happens to be standing in.

Whatever the explanation, the passenger experiences at LAS and EWR are radically different. One airport gets you in, checks you, helps you, and moves you along. The other seems determined to remind you that air travel in America can still feel like a probation interview.

And that may be the real lesson here. The travel industry keeps telling us it is focused on customer experience, but too often what it really delivers is a patchwork of fees, inconsistency, indifference, and ritual inconvenience. In Las Vegas, I expected to be nickeled and dimed by Caesars. I did not expect the airport to be the most rational part of the trip. With United at Newark, unfortunately, that part no longer surprises me at all.

I’m 100 percent sure the passenger experience doesn’t matter to airline management nowadays – unless it directly hurts their stock price and therefore executive compensation. Come to think of it, if the TSA started tearing those packages apart and scrutinizing them it would be a great use of their time.

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This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or disagree. Hearing from the traveling community is always a highlight for me. Thanks!