secure luggage

If you are carrying on, you don't need to lock. Leaving the US, you must use TSA approved locks if you are checking, and bags should be unlocked going through security if you carry on.

Any TSA approved lock is fine. If you don't loose things, I find that keyed locks are easier to use. My eyes are bad, and those combo locks are hard to see.

Purchase locks at Target in their travel section, or at a local luggage store if you have one.

I always use a combination lock on my checked luggage and in hotels on all my luggage.

If you don't have a TSA approved lock, you can use a regular one. You just have to wait until you luggage goes through the big xray machines to see if they are going to need you to open the suitcase or not. If you wait, and they have to open it, they will ask whose suitcase it is and if no one claims it, they will cut the lock. If you are there to open it, then you can open it. Sometimes they ask for the combo sometimes they let you open it yourself.

I have never encounter the situation the Crista describes. If the bag is checked and needs to be opened, they will break the lock. The TSA locks are only good on this side of the water. We secure our checked luggage with the plastic wire ties -- cheap, easy, and tough. Just remember to carry something to cut the ties off. I use a large toe nail clipper. A couple time when our bags were opened, the tie had been replaced with an orange tie. We are not as concerned with preventing theft as just keeping the bags closed and as a deterrent to a quick peek.

Frank, at both MIA in Miami and at FLL Fort Lauderdale they do what I described. I have also done this at Tampa, Chicago Ohare and at IAH Houston.

Buy a TSA lock and use it. They are cheap enough. I bought 3 and set them all to the last 4 digets of a phone number I have never forgotten. I did not put it on my suitcase flying to Rome in Sept and I wish I had. That is another story. Needless to say I used them after that and also used them when leaving my luggage in our hotel to as we were touring.

Crista's scenario wouldn't work at Newark Airport (terminal 3) either. At Newark the ticket agents place luggage on conveyor belts and the TSA does their thing behind the scenes, out of public view.

Christina, I often state that when one is giving advice one should be careful of assuming that their experience is universal. I am frequently through Chicago and Houston and I have not seen the pre-xray. Have only seen it in Salt Lake City. I believe that the normal procedures at the majority of airports, especially abroad, is to xray checked luggage out of sight of the passengers and in a separate area.

I must just be lucky. My new set of locks I just bought are TSA approved. I think the reason MIA and FLL do it the way they do is because of all the Latin American travel where they don't have TSA locks but are not going to leave their bags unlocked.

MIA and FLL do that way because after 9/11/01 more stringent baggage screening was needed. The only space some airports had for the new scanning machines and hand inspections stations was in the public areas. IMO unless one uses a metal or hard plastic case, locks are mostly pointless. A simple razor blade through the fabric of a bag will bypass any lock.

The more I pack light, the less I have to worry about all that.

If you are locking use a TSA lock. I would also get a combo lock if you are going to lock that way you don't have to worry about a key.