Why I Always Wear Long Sleeves at Airport Security

The temperature could be 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but I’m going to wear long sleeves and pants in the airport — at least while I go through security.

On a recent trip, I forgot to put my sweatshirt on before passing through security, and the subsequent delays it caused reminded me of how important this seemingly innocuous behavior is for my friends and me.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I get stopped at airport security nearly every time I don’t cover myself from head to toe. And despite what the employees say, I’ve come to believe “random” security screenings are anything but.

Here’s why I always wear long sleeves at airport security — and the evidence that tells me I’m not wrong in my assessment.

Why I Wear Long Sleeves at Security Checkpoints

Regardless of where I’m flying from or to, I plan to wear long sleeves while going through airport security. I might not wear my jacket or flannel shirt while checking in or walking around the airport, but I’m putting it on while going through the security checkpoint.

On a recent flight out of Lisbon (LIS), I pushed my backpack into the X-ray machine and walked toward the line at the metal detector. When it was my turn to step forward, I realized my long-sleeve shirt was in my backpack. My tattoos were showing, and of course, I was pulled aside for extra screening.

Yes, I believe it was because I have lots of tattoos.

I didn’t set off the metal detector, I didn’t have any code on my boarding pass that said I needed extra screening, and my bags themselves weren’t flagged by the staff at the X-ray machine. Someone at the checkpoint simply saw me and appeared out of nowhere to tell me I needed extra screening to check my pockets and to swab my hands for explosives.

If I go through airport security showing my arms or legs, I get stopped nearly every time. I’m always told it’s random, but it can’t be. Not when you’re pulled aside a well-above-average number of times. Among my friends and I, we joking lament how frequently our “tattoos set off the airport security alarms,” based on our experiences.

And that’s why I wear long sleeves at airport security. Doing so avoids pat-downs and swabs and opening my bags for extra screening.

Is This Just in My Head?

Getting stopped once or twice wouldn’t make much of a case for my belief that airport security staff stop people with lots of tattoos and say they were randomly selected. However, seeing it happen over and over and over tells me it’s not a coincidence.

Plus, I have data to back up my belief that airport staff stop heavily tattooed people for extra inspections.

When I first started to think I was getting stopped at airports because I have a lot of tattoos, I decided to take a scientific approach to see if I was right. For several years, when I was traveling with someone who had a lot of tattoos, I would ask them if they wanted to test my theory with this approach:

• One person was covered from head to toe.
• The other person passed through security with shoes off and some type of bland clothing — nothing that could be considered offensive or cause for being pulled aside — and had to travel in clothing that didn’t have pockets. This person also took off their shoes. Essentially, this person needed to obviously look like they didn’t have anything on their body that warranted an extra inspection.
• Both passengers made sure to follow all rules, not create a disruption at the security checkpoint, separate items as they were told, and generally give no reason for being selected for extra security screening.

We conducted over 200 tests. Along with dozens of flights in the U.S., we also tried this (in order of number of experiments) in Germany, Italy, the U.K., Canada, Russia, Morocco, and Australia.

We stopped testing, because the results were just too obvious. The person showing tattoos was pulled aside for screening over 90% of the time despite not setting off the metal detector or having their baggage flagged by staff at the X-ray machine. Conversely, the person not showing tattoos was only pulled aside in 11% of our experiments.

I didn’t count any times where someone had a forgotten item in their bag or pocket that warranted being pulled aside or caused the metal detector to beep. I’m only counting times where someone was pulled aside for inexplicable reasons, and we constantly switched which person showed tattoos. It might’ve been me on the outbound flight and my friend on the return flight — or half and half if there was a group of us.

However, the fact the person showing lots of tattoos got stopped at 9 times the rate of the person who wasn’t — even while all other factors were the same — tells me there’s implicit bias among airport security personnel.

And to quickly answer the question, no, none of us have tattoos that could be considered gang-related, criminal, or linked to any terrorist organizations. Nothing like that. Our visible tattoos are things like ’80s cartoons, Buddha, nature, and former pets who’ve now passed away.

With these numbers, I no longer felt the need to keep testing the theory. Showing a lot of tattoos at airport security greatly increases your chances of being pulled aside for extra screening. That’s what the data tells me and my friends.

Thus, I always travel in long pants and bring something with long sleeves to wear through security, even if I’m not wearing it anywhere else inside the airport.

Final Thoughts

I once emailed the TSA, asking if anyone wanted to comment on the data from our U.S. checkpoint experiences. I never received a response.

However, experiences and testing tell me that being pulled aside for extra screening at airport security is anything but random. If it were, I’d expected to be pulled aside just as often when I’m showing tattoos as when I’m not. My friends, strangers I’ve talked to at airports, and I will tell you that being heavily tattooed leads to higher rates of being pulled aside.

Even though tattoos are increasingly common, there still seems to be some level of bias amongst airport security staff. Throwing on a jacket and sweating for a few minutes in line at security is worth it to avoid the hassles.

And yes, I’m aware that other people get pulled aside for implicit bias related to things they can’t cover up with long sleeves, such as their skin color or national origin. In that regard, I’m lucky that I can avoid hassles and delays with a sweatshirt, as much as the reasoning behind it defies logic.