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If you’re as obsessed with travel and travel hacks as we are, your TikTok For You page has probably been serving up video after video of a sleek backpack that promises to shrink down a week’s worth of clothes using a built-in vacuum system. The Airback looks like a standard backpack, an essential item when it comes to packing light. But the included tiny air pump sucks all the air from the inner main compartment, giving you a lot more space to work with. Sounds pretty great — but the real question is whether you’ll have any trouble getting this contraption through TSA. In short: you won’t.
According to the TSA website, vacuum-sealed bags are allowed (though discouraged) in both carry-on and checked luggage. However, that comes with a caveat — TSA officers must be able to see and screen the contents of your bag. So, if your compression bag is overstuffed or too tightly packed and they can’t properly see what’s inside, you could be pulled aside for additional airport screening that requires you to uncompress your bag.
The good thing about the Airback, however, is that the built-in vacuum system should allow you to easily decompress and recompress the bag without getting stuck trying to repack everything from scratch. And to make it even easier for TSA to manually inspect your bag without too much disruption, individual packing cubes may be the answer.
The pros and cons of using a vacuum carry-on bag
