Air Travel

All airline passengers on domestic flights as well as those inbound from international cities will be checked against government watch lists, it was announced today by Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. According to a DHS press release, the TSA will prescreen the name, date of birth, and gender of each passenger [...]

The nation’s commercial pilots will be exempted from high-tech scanning and pat-downs at security checkpoints, succeeding in a two-year period of negotiations with the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA Friday agreed to lift the requirements for pilots to have to pass through full-body Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scanning devices after they complained about long-term radiation [...]

The nation’s airline pilots are protesting requirements by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to be screened by new full-body imaging as well as resisting any physical pat-downs without a witness. Leaders of the Air Line Pilots Association International (ALPA) and the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA) have voiced their concerns to the Department of Homeland [...]

Tired of packing trial size toiletries in your carry-on luggage? Department of Homeland Security officials Wednesday unveiled a new bottled liquid scanner in a test to see how well it could detect the differences between safe liquids and explosives. The demonstration took place at Albuquerque’s airport. The scanner, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, uses [...]

Lithium-ion batteries — the rechargeable energy source for cellphones, laptop computers and an increasing number of other portable electronic devices — are becoming a growing concern for airlines in passenger cabins and cargo holds. Non-rechargeable lithium metal batteries like those in cameras and flashlights are a concern, too. When a lithium battery short-circuits or overheats, [...]