ReturnKey makes money helping travelers ship banned items
With the list of items banned from flights growing, a Texas company finds way to serve passengers who arrived at the airport with such items, and make money in the process
Every cloud has a silver lining. In the old days it was often the case that you got to the airport and then realized you forgot something at home that you needed for the trip. These days, it is more often the case that you get to the airport and then realize you are carrying with you an item you would not be allowed to bring on board.
What to do? You may discard them or sacrifice them to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). A clever Texas company has come up with a third way, and Palm Beach International Airport is showing the way: Mail the banned items to yourself — either to your home or to your flight destination — or pay $9.99 to hold them at the airport until you return.
The Palm Beach Post’s Ron Hayes reports that in December two Automated Mailing Kiosks appeared in the security areas at PBIA’s Concourses A/B and C. If you show up at the airport with a banned item, a TSA agent will accompany you to the kiosk, deposit the knife in a mailing envelope, and watch while you drop it in the box. A passenger fills out the mailing address on a computerized screen, pays with a credit card and saves the receipt. The cost ranges from $9.99 to hold an item to $45 to mail a lighter, which is considered hazardous, overseas.
At PBIA, the service is operated by Latsi Pataki, who already operates Apolodor Foreign Currency Exchange at the the airport. He subcontracts the mailing service from League City,Texas-based ReturnKey Systems, a four-year-old company.
“We work with them because it’s customer-friendly and efficient for us,” TSA spokeswoman Maxine McManaman said. “But there is no financial relationship at all. TSA makes no money off this.”
The founder of ReturnKey, Steve Kranyec, declined to discuss his company’s finances, except to note, “If the airport’s not profitable, we’re not in there.” ReturnKey has so far placed its kiosks in sixteen airports, including Fort Lauderdale and Tampa in Florida, Chicago O’Hare, and Dulles outside of Washington, D.C. Kranyec says that the service the company provides at Dulles is especially poignant: “We have a lot of people who go to Arlington cemetery for a military funeral,” he explained, “and they give you the shell casing from a gun salute. Well, you can’t take a spent shell casing onto a plane because there’s gunpowder residue. It’s understandable, but people, in their grief, don’t understand. “A lot of people send spent shell casings through us.”
