TSA’s September 11th is going up. I figure you knew this already, but what you might not have known is that its going into effect on any flights booked after 12am (ED)T, 21 July 2014. Meaning, if you know you’re flying through the end of airlines’ calendars, then you should book now, if you have reasonable confidence.

The fee is going from $2.50 per segment to $5.60 one-way. Right off the start you’re losing unless you take a circuitous, hard to book routing. Here’s where it gets worse though (and the industry proposed it -see page 4). If you have a layover of more than 4 hours (aka stop-over) between two domestic flights, or 12 hours between a domestic and an international flight or two international flights (why anyone would swing by the US just to visit Customs and Immigration, I have no idea). Then you’ll have to pay another $5.60, for a total of $11.20 for that single way; in all fairness, it appears that this was in fact the way it used to be. E.g. Fly Washington-National to Dallas-Fort Worth, spend 5 hours at the Centurion Lounge for a massage, manicure and facial, then continue to Seattle, well, that’ll be $11.20, instead of what used to be $5.00.

I figured I’d use gcmapper to draw some cool maps, but got distracted when I looked at TSA’s examples:

TSA Examples

I hope I’m not the only one that sees a flight from Washington-Dulles to Chicago, onward to Los Angeles, then onward to Seattle (stopover), Seattle to Los Angeles, as looking a lot like a mileage run. Or how about: Newark to Chicago (stopover), Chicago to Denver (stopover), Denver to Las Vegas (stopover–because, why not?), Las Vegas to Chicago (stopover), then Chicago to San Francisco. For the sake of a pretty picture, here’s a look:

Example of a TSA $28.00 fee “one way.”

So, in all fairness, the story isn’t how many times you’ll be charged $5.60. It is in fact that, I can’t foresee anyway, where you actually save money. At a minimum, you’re paying 12% more.

So, Book ’em if you know ’em!