The airport. That fun location between the real world and your trip. A place where everything is designed to part you with as much of your holiday money as possible. One thing many people don’t realise is that you can bring food through airport security.
That’s right, you can save your hard earned cash by bringing some with you for the long wait before your flight, for the flight itself, or both. I’ve done it before and this is what happened.
Bringing Food Through Airport Security
Some Dutch friends of mine came to Ireland so we could take a flight on a Fokker 50. Hey, aviation geeks gotta geek from time to time, right? Anyway, we spent the evening before catching up and having drinks, and were a little on the fragile side when we got to the airport.
At the time, Terminal 1 in Dublin Airport had an eternally popular landside McDonald’s restaurant, which was sadly a casualty of the pandemic. After check-in, we headed up there to get some wraps, nuggets and other bits to satisfy our hunger.
When it was our turn to go through, our bags went through, as did the bag of McDonald’s and the dips. None of the security screening staff batted an eyelid and it all went through fine. At the gate, we stood around eating our landside booty to envious glances from the other passengers.
Overall Thoughts
There you have it, proof that you can take food through airport security. Of course, drinks are prohibited as they’re over the 100ml limit, but savvy travellers are now bringing empty bottles and filling them with water after security. It keeps you hydrated inflight, plus you don’t need to purchase any of the airport drinks.
You could save even more money than we did by purchasing the food you want from your local store and bringing it with you. Either way, there is no problem doing this and it can save you plenty of money. You can also take it on the plane and eat it there, avoiding the buy on board menu as well. The money is better in your pocket, after all!
Have you ever brought food through airport security to save cash at the airport or to bring on the plane with you? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Dublin Airport.
McDonald’s Japan by Ryuta Ishimoto via Wikimedia Commons.
Never tried it here in the States. I do pack a zippy full of candy/granola bars in my carryon but have never tried it with pre-security airport food as usually all the “good” places are post-security in the US. If I do take something onboard from the secure zone, I always do something that won’t stink up the whole plane, like a cold sandwich and crisps (the English version), I have set near people who have brought an entire funk-filled bag of junk food onboard and it’s not really pleasant.
Makes sense! In Dublin, McDonald’s was the main place landside, while Burger King is airside, plus of course a stack of other places. Yes, I wouldn’t be bringing Kim Chi through security to chow down on while flying, though I am sure some have done that and worse 🙂