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Ethan works for TSA at LAX On the busiest travel day, according to him - Christmas Eve. His pregnant girlfriend, Nora is trying to get Ethan to try to go through the police academy again even though he failed last time. But that seems hard so he decides he going to really try to move upward in the TSA, so he gets to work and asks his supervisor, Phil, to assign him to manage a baggage-scanning lane, cuz that's what the big dogs do.

While on duty, Ethan finds an ear bud and is instructed to put it in. He begins to hear the voice of a bad guy we know just as the Traveler, who threatens to kill Nora unless Ethan allows a specific carry-on bag to pass through the scanner without interference. The Traveler’s accomplice, the Watcher, monitors Ethan remotely via the airport security cameras, making sure he can’t call for help or do any funny business. Ethan secretly tries to alert his co-worker with a message written in invisible ink, but before he can act, the Traveler poisons him and causing him to have a heart attack.

Jason's boss notices Ethan is kinda all over the place so he replaces him with his friend Jason. When the Traveler threatens to kill Jason if Ethan doesn’t comply, Ethan plants an alcoholic drink at Jason’s workstation and rats him out for being drunk on the job. Back in control of the scanner, Ethan lets the instructed carry-on bag through but later finds out that it contains this deadly nerve agent.

Meanwhile, LAPD detective Elena Cole investigates a double homicide tied to the smuggling of said nerve gas. She suspects shady doings at LAX so she orders a terminal-wide sweep and Ethan secretly flags the bag guy for inspection. Suspecting Ethan’s interference, the Traveler confronts him in a restroom, leading to a scuffle where Ethan manages to seize the Traveler’s plastic gun. The Traveler is like big whoop and arms the bomb.

So Ethan has to go stop the bag guy from being inspected and hopefully disarm the bomb, which he does but not before his boss is killed by the bag guy who then reveals to Ethan he’s also being blackmailed—his husband, Jesse, is being held hostage by the Watcher. The Traveler shows up and grabs the bag case and orders the Watcher to kill Nora, but Ethan uses the original bag guys phone to warn her and she escapes. 

On the way to the airport Detective Cole realizes this officer she is with is an imposter working for the Traveler and kills him. She then gets to the airport, finds Ethan, only to find out that Ethan is trying to stop the bomb and pleads for her to trust him. They discover the Traveler’s target is a Congresswoman who’s on a flight to Washington, D.C for a meeting about weapon funding. The planned attack is going to to implicate Russia, and would then get massive defense spending approved and bad guys like that.

The Traveler boards the flight, unaware Ethan has swapped the bomb into a similar but larger suitcase, forcing him to stow it in the plane’s cargo hold. Ethan sneaks into the hold to disarm the bomb while Nora persuades Cole to let the flight take off, so that the Traveler wouldn't suspect anything shady. but he gets a notification that someone is working on the bomb, so he figures it out and goes down to stop Ethan. Before the Traveler can rearm the bomb and escape via parachute, Ethan locks him in an airtight refrigeration unit with the nerve agent, killing him. The plane safely returns to the airport.

A year later, Ethan, now a police officer, travels with Nora, their son, and Jason’s family on a trip to Tahiti. At a TSA checkpoint, Ethan places his LAPD badge in the scanning tray, having finally achieved his dream.