Ask Margar-etiquette about Airport Etiquette, TSA, and Keeping Your Cool

Dear Margar-etiquette,

I travel fairly often, and I’m always surprised by how rude people can become at the airport—especially going through TSA. I understand people are stressed, but is there etiquette around dealing with airport employees and security staff?

Frequent Flyer

Dear Flyer,

Airports may be one of the greatest modern tests of everyday manners. People are tired, rushed, overstimulated, running late, worried about delays, carrying too much, paying too much, and trying to navigate an environment filled with rules, lines, and uncertainty. Add TSA screening to the mix, and even normally pleasant people can become short-tempered or impatient.

But stress does not cancel courtesy.

That’s worth remembering because airport employees and TSA agents often absorb the emotional overflow from hundreds (sometimes thousands) of travelers a day. By the time you reach the counter or security checkpoint, there’s a good chance the employee helping you has already been blamed for weather delays, yelled at over baggage fees, or treated more like an obstacle than a human being.

From the perspective of the airport employee or TSA agent, the experience can be equally exhausting. They are expected to move people through quickly, maintain safety, enforce rules they did not create, and stay alert for hours at a time, all while interacting with frustrated travelers who may already be having a bad day. Most people only experience the airport occasionally; these employees experience its tension continuously. And while no system is perfect, etiquette asks us to separate frustration with the process from the person standing in front of us.

That begins with preparation.

One of the kindest things travelers can do is arrive informed. Have identification ready, know the TSA expectations, and wear shoes that are easy to remove if necessary. Pay attention to instructions instead of waiting to be individually coached through the process. Preparedness reduces tension not only for you, but for everyone around you.

There’s also etiquette in how we communicate under pressure.

A TSA agent saying, “Step over here,” may sound abrupt, but efficiency is part of their job. Airports are not designed for long, warm exchanges. That doesn’t mean travelers should respond with sarcasm, eye-rolling, muttering, or hostility. Calm cooperation goes much farther than people realize.

At the same time, airport and TSA employees benefit from remembering that many travelers are anxious, inexperienced, grieving, overwhelmed, or simply afraid of missing an important flight. A small moment of patience, eye contact, or calm explanation can completely change the tone of an interaction. Courtesy is not solely the traveler’s responsibility; professionalism and humanity matter on both sides of the counter.

And importantly, courtesy is not submission. If an employee is genuinely disrespectful, you can still advocate for yourself firmly and calmly. Good manners are not about becoming passive; they are about maintaining your composure without escalating the situation.

Airports also reveal something else about human behavior: stress tends to narrow our awareness. We stop noticing the elderly traveler trying to keep up, the overwhelmed parent folding a stroller while holding a toddler, or the employee repeating the same instructions for the thousandth time that day.

Etiquette widens our awareness again.

Sometimes that looks like stepping aside before reorganizing your bags. Sometimes it means not blocking the moving walkway while texting. Sometimes it’s simply offering patience instead of attitude. And perhaps most importantly, it means remembering that everyone in the airport is trying to get somewhere important to them.

If there’s a guiding principle here, it’s this: difficult environments are often where consideration matters most. Anyone can be pleasant when things are easy. Courtesy becomes meaningful when things are inconvenient.

So the next time you’re inching through security barefoot with your laptop in one bin and your dignity in another, take a breath and remember: the goal is not just to get through the airport. It’s to get through it with everyone’s humanity intact. 

Where manners meet real life,

Margar-etiquette