TSA considers allowing bottles of water through airport security for PreCheck passengers
Sep 14, 2026, 3:45 PM | Updated: Sep 15, 2026, 12:48 pm
If you’ve ever stood at a DIA security bin, making painful eye contact with a TSA agent while chugging a $5 bottle of Dasani you bought 90 seconds earlier, this one’s for you.
The TSA is actively considering allowing PreCheck passengers to bring full water bottles through airport security, a rule change that would undo one of the most universally hated travel restrictions of the past two decades. The potential change would initially roll out at airports equipped with newer CT screening technology that can distinguish water from other liquids and identify threats, and would apply only to TSA PreCheck members. No specific airports have been named yet, but DIA, the third-busiest airport in the country, already has water bottle filling stations on all three concourses specifically because so many travelers dump their bottles at security and need to refill on the other side. If Denver isn’t on the early rollout list, it should be.
The cynics will point out that this feels like a sales pitch for PreCheck, and they’re probably not wrong. This comes just days after the TSA launched its Gateside program at 13 airports, allowing approved non-ticketed PreCheck members to pass through security and wait at the gate with friends and family, another perk designed to make the $78 membership feel worth it. But if the alternative is continuing to trash millions of perfectly good water bottles a year, or paying DIA concession prices for a new one on the other side (a 9NEWS investigation earlier this year found markups exceeding 100 percent on drinks inside the airport), most people will take the upsell.
For now, the existing 3-1-1 rule is still firmly in place: carry-on liquids must be 3.4 ounces or less, packed in a clear quart-sized bag. The TSA hasn’t confirmed a timeline or which airports will get the green light first. But the fact that we’re even having this conversation, 20 years after the liquid ban went into effect in 2006, feels like progress.
