Credit: BoogaFrito
The selection in duty free is always cheaper and sometimes varied enough that you can find some gems you’ve never heard of. About ten years ago, that’s how I discovered Jura.
On the most recent trip, from Shanghai to New York’s JFK Airport, I made sure to buy a few bottles in the duty free in Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. After I made my purchases, I stuffed them gingerly in my carry-on (which I made sure had room for a few bottles!) and hopped on the plan for my awesome fifteen hour flight.
The flight itself was fine, except our one year old son didn’t sleep at all, but when we landed in JFK we had to transfer for our final leg to Baltimore.
We went through customs and were led to a huge room with a bunch of folding tables. Our checked luggage was waiting there because we would have to transfer all of our duty free bottles from our carry-on luggage to checked luggage!
It wasn’t a big deal, just a minor hassle, but it always stuck out in my mind as being… silly.
If this happened to you, it’s because of the TSA but it won’t be happening for long.
TSA has relaxed the rules and now you won’t need to pack the bottle back into your luggage as long as it was placed in a secure, tamper-evident bag (STEB). They’ll still scan it, as they would other medically necessary bottles, but now you won’t need to check it.
Personally? I’ll still check it. It would be horrible for some overzealous TSA agent to not clear that bottle of Macallan 25 because, well, they’d rather confiscate it.