air travel

Your bag may be flagged for a more intensive search if you pack them in your checked luggage. Anything electronic or with lots of wires and/or a battery pack will be seen on an x ray. My dad once packed an electronics engineering toy kit for my son in his checked bag and they pulled it for a thorough search at his home airport. Due to that, it did not get on the plane with him and he did not end up getting it delivered to our home until the third day of his visit. If a bag misses a flight you will be at the mercy of the airline's baggage handling service which is neither pleasant nor timely, most of the time.

If you can, pack the lights in your carry-on so that you can offer them up for manual search at the checkpoint.

For specific information about what you can and can't pack, you should go to the TSA website.

thanks for the personal advice. there are some subjects the TSA does not cover...such as Christmas lights. Another seemingly ridiculous question (but try to remember your first flight), on the trip to WDW, I assume the luggage tag should reflect our Disney destination (then reverse on the return trip) ?

Thanks again for any travel advise.
:santa:

I would think that packing Christmas lights would be fine though do expect your bag to get extra scrutiny when you include something that is coiled and has wires.

I don't change my luggage tags for each leg of my journey. I simply rely on there being contact information on my luggage tags. I also include such information inside my bag in case the luggage tag is no longer attached to the bag.

Just a few weeks ago, I took 3 strands of Halloween lights (same as Christmas lights) to California via Southwest in my checked luggage. On the way there, they were boxed up new, and on the way back, they were just thrown into my suitcase. Neither time was there any indication my luggage had been opened and/or sifted through. I wouldn't worry too much about it.