Are you a bad traveler if you stack empty bins at airport security?

Nobody likes going through airport security, but you can do your part to make it easier for everyone.

A recently posted, now-viral video shows a traveler taking empty bins from the security conveyor belt and stacking them in the return pile. Commenters largely praised the poster's initiative, with accounts identifying themselves as current and former Transportation Security Administration and airline employees saying that travelers like that make the airport experience a little bit better.

Transportation Security Administration employees work the security line during the government shutdown, at McGhee Tyson airport, in Alcoa, Tenn., Nov. 6, 2025.

It's similar in some ways to the internet's Shopping Cart Theory, which suggests that whether or not someone returns their shopping cart to the corral is a litmus test for ethics.

In the airport, travelers say bin stacking is generally the right thing to do with one commenter posting "every time (I) do this a TSA agent thanks me like (I) just saved a cat from a tree. (T)hey clearly don’t see it often (and) it’s sad."

Still, some others said stacking bins goes against the policy at their home airport.

"My home state airport (Salt Lake) has a sign asking us to leave the trays on the belt and to not stack them ourselves," one commenter wrote.

Even at airports where the bins are supposed to be self-returning, the queue sometimes backs up, which can slow screening down. (This travel reporter has seen it many times. I'm also often compelled to get the empty bins out of the way.)

TSA officials previously told USA TODAY that the specific guidelines vary at each checkpoint because airports have different technology and screening capabilities available.

“One thing that is a pretty frequent moniker here, ‘when you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one airport.’ They’re all so very different,” Carter Langston, press secretary for Strategic Communications and Public Affairs at the TSA, said in April. “When you talk about airport security screening at the checkpoint, TSA really does have a risk-based, intelligence-driven, multiple layers of security, both seen and unseen.”

In general, the best thing to do is listen to TSA officers for how to move through the checkpoint, but also use your common sense if you encounter an obstacle while going through security.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at [email protected].