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The Transportation Security Administration says it is making the switch in technology to speed up lines at crowded airports, not to ease passenger privacy concerns. But civil liberties groups hope the change signals that the equipment will eventually go to the scrap heap.

"Hopefully this represents the beginning of a phase-out of the X-ray-type scanners, which are more privacy intrusive and continue to be surrounded by health questions," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The machines will not be retired. They are being moved to smaller airports while Congress presses the TSA to adopt stronger privacy safeguards on all of its imaging equipment.

In the two years since they first appeared at the nation's busiest airports, the "backscatter" model of scanner has been the focus of protests and lawsuits because it uses X-rays to peer beneath travelers' clothing.

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That was the case when North Dakota Republican Rep. Rick Berg, then a state legislator and now locked in an unexpectedly tight Senate race, charged his state’s taxpayers $1,017 for a stay in November 2005 to attend a conference organized by corporate lobbyists. Factor in valet parking, airfare, food and his legislative per diem, and the total bill to the state was $2,441.56.

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Afterward, Romney said the following to the Los Angeles Times:

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no -- and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

The remarks have touched off a storm of snarky commentary from those in the blogosphere who have a slightly better grasp of things aeronautical. Should I join the chorus?

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Federal authorities charged 26-year-old Kenneth W. Smith Jr. with conveying false and misleading information.

According to a criminal complaint, Smith called police at the airport on Thursday and falsely reported a passenger was carrying an explosive substance.

Authorities then recalled a Dallas-bound US Airways flight to Philadelphia. Passenger Christopher Shell was taken off the plane at gunpoint by law enforcement officers, who later said Shell did nothing wrong.

Smith is scheduled for an initial appearance in federal court on Friday afternoon. The investigation is continuing.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and possible restitution.

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When I was young, my family was not the only one that, however bad the food, would go to the airport to have a meal. Just being around air travel was a treat. The idea of travel has long been an excitement. We find it in prose, poetry, and song -- particularly since safe and fast mechanisms, especially planes, have appealed to a wide audience. Air travel feeds on the basic human desire to “get out” -- up, up, and away. The Italian song, “Volare” (“to fly”) won two Grammys and was the Billboard top single of 1958. “Come fly with me,” echoed Frank Sinatra in his huge hit album of that name in the same year. Some of the frisson may have been fed by a sense of some danger; flying was indeed less safe in those days. To help assuage and assure while at the same time performing little miracles of hot meals even on short flights, air carriers larded on cocktails, shrimp appetizers, and attractive young stewardesses. And people could visit the gates to see one another off and meet those coming in, sometimes with large (and animated) groups of well-wishers and greeters.

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They stop their conversation to watch what I’m doing, like it’s gross, like it’s not their destiny. They’re at the stage of life when all their discussions revolve around coupling and the search for love. This is where it leads, I want to tell these girls. You have dinner in Chelsea one night with the cute groomsman from that wedding and four years later he’s pushing your kid on a luggage cart while you scrub her breakfast off a teddy bear. I’m the Ghost of Vacations Yet to Come, ladies. Enjoy Mallorca. See you back here in eight years.

The summer holiday travel season is drawing to a close, and my family is one of countless currently lining up at airports around the globe with the grim-faced fortitude of those about to board a plane with small children. We – my husband, our 18-month-old daughter and myself – are embarking on the second annual Tour de Grandparents, a cross-country extravaganza made international by the fact that we live in London.

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The sex toy, which had been taken out of their belongings, was covered in a “greasy foul-smelling substance” and “taped prominently” to the top of the suitcase. Bridgeman told NBC News, "I was absolutely and utterly shocked and embarrassed and humiliated and I didn’t even know what to do at the time.” Now that they have overcome the shock, the couple has decided to sue saying that "I absolutely, fervently believe that this was intentional. It was very sick and it was very wrong and it was just maliciously taped to the top and targeted because we’re gay."

You can read the lawsuit in its entirety here.

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In my mind, the key to keeping airplanes safe is, and always has been, stopping acts of sabotage while they are still in the planning stages. Here in the age of the TSA checkpoint, with its toothpaste confiscations and obsession with pointy objects, we tend not to think this way, preoccupied instead with a kind of airport Kabuki -- the tedious, fanatical screening of passengers and their carry-ons. Real airport security takes place offstage, as it were. It is the job of the folks at the CIA and the FBI, working together with foreign authorities. And while TSA has an important role here too, we can do without the spectacle of airport guards rifling through innocent people's bags in a pathological hunt for what are effectively harmless items.

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That is what makes the policy of Delta Airlines so shockingly un-American.  In Austin, Delta had not one but two lines that fed into the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint area. One line was mixed race, mixed class and mixed age. The other line was usually empty. Now and then a white, middle-aged man would appear in the second line and the first line would be halted as he went directly into the TSA checkpoint.

“Who are those guys?” I asked a TSA officer, when I reached the front of the second-class citizen line.

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I'll admit that I was initially stunned to see how apparently commonplace the practice is. I'd never given my two daughters Benadryl or anything else to calm them down when they were young travelers, and the thought of doing so seemed wrong to me. It would have felt like a violation of their trust, a willful introduction of something unnecessary into their bodies for my own convenience.

In fairness, though, my kids have barely ever flown, and when they have, they've been reasonably chill. And after getting an earful from other parents both on Twitter and via email, I began to wonder if doing something that could make a child comfortable -- and one's fellow travelers considerably less inconvenienced – was such a big deal.

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I can think of a few: TSA, delayed flights, garbage in your seat pocket. Screaming kids and misdirected luggage. "CNN Airport News."

Or, how about the blizzard of cardboard placards that hotel chains insist on littering their rooms with? I spend a quarter of my life in hotel rooms, and I resent having to spend the first five minutes of every stay gathering up an armful of this diabolical detritus and heaving it into a corner where it belongs. Attention, innkeepers: This is fundamentally bad business. One's first moments in a hotel room should be relaxing. The room itself should impart a sense of welcome. It shouldn't put you to work.

And here's another one: the ever-expanding collection of electronic cords, adapters, chargers and gadgets I'm obliged to haul around with me. You know what I'm talking about. Anybody who travels regularly knows what I'm talking about. All of this, supposedly, to keep us "connected." To make our lives easier and more productive.

Does it?

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I routinely fly from Los Angeles to Beijing on United. It's an all-daylight flight over Alaska and Russia. How can I find the approximate route the Air China flight takes on the same route? I'm flying that airline later in the month and would like to know what I'll be seeing below.

Routings aren't commonly airline-specific. The determining factors tend to be air traffic control constraints and weather (winds, storms, etc.). Routings tend to be somewhat consistent, but it can vary day to day, even for flights between the same two cities.

Another factor is the aircraft type. Two-engine planes are subject to what we call ETOPS (extended twin-engine operations) restrictions, which might result in a different, less direct routing than a plane with four engines can accept. ETOPS rules require planes to remain within particular flying distances (three hours, most commonly) of an acceptable diversion airport. (The diversion airports themselves will vary, subject to weather.) Across the North Atlantic it makes little difference; two engines or four there are always adequate diversion options relatively close by. Over the Pacific, though, it's a little different, and there might be considerable differences between a route operated by, say, a two-engine 777, and the same route operated by a four-engine 747.

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All of these measures in place today -- the liquids and gels rules, the pointy object confiscations, the multiple ID checks, the body-scanners and the pat-downs -- would they have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks?

Of course not. The success of the 2001 attacks had nothing to do with box cutters. The hijackers' critical tool was an intangible one: the element of surprise. That is, taking advantage of our understanding and expectations of a hijacking. What weapons they had in their bags was irrelevant. They could have used anything.

For that matter, would any of these measures have prevented the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103? How about the bombings of Air India 182 or UTA 772?

Again the answer is no. It was bombs in the lower holds that got those planes.

I don't know about you, but when I'm on a plane I worry a lot more about what's going on below deck -- in checked luggage and cargo -- than I do about passengers and their carry-ons. The Transportation Security Administration tells us that all checked bags are scanned nowadays for explosives, and that's about the most valuable thing the agency does for us. I just hope agents do it with as much over-the-top scrutiny as they use to paw through carry-ons looking for forks and toothpaste.

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Why, then, is it so bloody hard to find a proper bookstore at an airport? Not all of us pre-load our reading material on a Kindle.

I was in Detroit the other day. The terminal at DTW is one of America's best, and the mile-long concourse is jammed with retail shops. But do you think I could find a book in there? If I wanted a diamond bracelet, a $300 Tumi briefcase or a cup of gourmet coffee, on the other hand, no problem.  But a book?

Sure, there are places selling books -- there are lots of places selling books -- provided you're interested in one of a tiny sample of titles. There was something vaguely North Korean about walking the length of the concourse and seeing the exact same hardcovers, over and over and over and over -- Steve Jobs staring out at me every 20 steps or so from the shelves of any of 50 different shops, all utterly indistinguishable from one another.

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JFK's Terminal 3 (scheduled for replacement in 2013) was voted the worst, while the Hajj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was ranked best.

These things are subjective, and we all have our own criteria, but both lists leave me scratching my head.

As to the worsts, they've obviously never been to the arrivals hall at Dakar (or, from what I've been told by several emailers, to N'djili Airport in Kinshasa, Congo). The best list, too, is a little strange. I'm unsure how fair it was including the Hajj terminal -- a building that is open only six weeks each year and visited almost exclusively by pilgrims. Seoul's Incheon airport is a well-deserved inclusion, but conspicuously absent is Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi. BKK ought to be there on aesthetic merits alone -- its central terminal is one of the most stunning buildings I've ever seen.

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A couple of weeks ago  I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Motto: "Malignantibus Parta! Timor vincit omnia!"

Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?

Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.

It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I'm dropping the "American" part and changing the name to the "Security Hysteria Hall of Shame," since, as you'll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds.

I knew there was trouble when the X-ray belt came to a stop and I was asked to open my bag.

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The Baldwin brouhaha comes on the heels of a splashy New York Times story about the supposed harmlessness of electronic devices. The gist of public perception -- certainly the perception of Mr. Baldwin -- fueled and refueled by articles like this, is that the prohibition against personal electronic devices is a waste of time.

Well, it is and it isn't. It depends which gadgets you're talking about, and for what reasons.

Can a cellphone really interfere with a plane's systems and avionics? The answer is that it's highly unlikely, but possible. That's not the answer you want, I know, but like almost everything in commercial aviation, it depends. For example, although a plane's electronics are designed with interference in mind, if the shielding is old or faulty there's a greater potential for trouble.

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