Here's how much cash US travelers left at security checkpoints last year

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A penny here and a quarter there might not seem like much, but when it’s all tallied all up, passengers abandon a hefty chunk of change when they empty their pockets at security checkpoints across the US – the yearly totals are staggering.

This week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it had collected nearly $1 million in unclaimed funds – both loose change and paper money, domestic currency and foreign – over the course of the 2019 fiscal year, ending in September. Of that amount, $907,131.35 was in US dollars, and $18,899.09 was in foreign currency, for a grand total of $926,030.44 – about $34,000 less than the year prior.

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Unsurprisingly, the biggest numbers come from some of the country’s busiest airports, chief among them New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where travelers abandoned $98,110 alone. Next on the list is San Francisco International with $52,668.70, followed by Miami International with $47,694.03, Las Vegas’s McCarran International with $44,401.76, and Dallas/Fort Worth International with $40,218.19.

Coins in a grey TSA bin — The funds found include coins and paper money, foreign and domestic currency alike © TSA

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Conversely, smaller airports reported less unclaimed cash. Only $184.42 was left behind at Dallas’s Love Field, the lowest amount on record, followed by Casper, Wyoming’s Natrona County International with $234.94; rounding out the bottom three was Charleston, West Virginia’s Yeager Airport, where agents found just $342.41 in their security bins.

The TSA is required by law to file a brief detailing how much unclaimed money is collected each year and how those funds are spent. Per the Fiscal Year 2020 Report to Congress, the agency had nearly $3,619,000 available as of September 30, 2019, including the cash collected in 2019. Of that amount, $2,100,000 was earmarked for training and development, $996,475.51 was expended during the year, and $32,150 was spent on bookmarks distributed at checkpoints nationwide to advertise the TSA PreCheck program, with $1,518,696 remaining for other uses. To see the full report, visit tsa.gov.