The amount of travelers coming through the Boise Airport during the holiday season is up quite a bit from this time in 2017.  If you're one of the people departing from BOI save yourself the headache by making sure you've packed properly. 

The TSA is reminding holiday travelers that if they're traveling with gifts for loved ones to leave those gifts unwrapped in their carry-on or checked luggage.  As TSA agents are making sure your bags are safe, it's quite possible for a wrapped gift to be flagged for additional screening.  If that happens, they have no choice to but to undo the beautiful wrapping job you did to make sure you're not bringing something dangerous onto the aircraft.

According to Travel and Leisure, it's completely legal for the TSA to unwrap your presents and often, they won't try to re-wrap them.  Travelers have shared photos of packages re-taped with a less than subtle Department of Homeland security tape or their presents sitting on top of crinkled wrapping paper.  In both cases, the gifts were now accompanied by a notice of baggage inspection from the TSA.

You can avoid having your wrapping destroyed by putting the gifts in easy to search gift bags or wrapping then once you arrive at your final destination.

Before heading to the airport, it's also important to make sure that your item isn't on the TSA's prohibited items list by clicking HERE.  If you are traveling with an item that doesn't appear on this rather comprehensive list, you can snap a photo of it and ask a TSA agent via Facebook Messenger or Twitter 6 a.m.-8 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m.-5 p.m. on weekends.

Personally, I'm a big fan of just sending the packages I plan on gifting to people to my dad's house in Ohio and wrap them once I arrive for the holidays.  It'll be a little more of a challenge this year because I don't arrive until Christmas Eve, but it can be done! And...I won't be the person everyone hates for holding up the security line.

If you're in a time crunch and are really panicked about having your gifts wrapped, remember a lot of online retailers like Amazon and Target offering gift wrapping for a small fee.

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