TSA Secretly Tracks Ordinary Passengers at These Airports

America’s busiest airport is now accepting reservations for its first-ever private luxury terminal opening this September. The new terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International will offer a premium pre- and post-flight experience, where for a hefty sum, travelers can fly in and out of the high-traffic airport without ever stepping foot in the hectic main terminal.

It’s the end of an era for plastic water bottles at the Los Angeles International Airport.

With no sign of relief in sight, the TSA’s inability to effectively and efficiently manage airport security screening promises to remain this summer’s biggest bad-news travel story.

The TSA has been in the news lately, and not for a good reason. As you may have noticed, the security lines at most major U.S. airports are ridiculously long—so long that many people are actually missing flights despite arriving at the airport within the typical two-hour window.

It’s been almost 15 years since Richard Reid, better known as the shoe bomber, failed in his attempt to bring down an American Airlines flight with an explosive hidden in his shoe. And yet here we are, all these years later, still shuffling through TSA checkpoints in our socks or bare feet. Why, you might ask, are we still forced to do this?

Give thanks! Just in time for the busy holiday travel season, American and United have launched automated security screening lanes at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Two of American’s 18 lanes have been converted, and United has added three automated lanes of its own.

The long lines, missed flights, and traveler outrage have been front-page news for months. And there’s little prospect that the bottleneck at the TSA’s airport security checkpoints can be ameliorated in time to for the summer travel crush.

Not to be outdone by American’s $4 million lifeline to the TSA, Delta has gone a step further and actually designed and implemented new security checkpoints at Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport.

Depending on your point of view, busier airports are either a blessing or a curse. For the Airports Council International, which just released its ACI World Airport Traffic Report, busy airports are a sign of economic vitality and consumer vigor.

It was only a handful of months ago that we were posting headline after headline bemoaning the seemingly sudden onslaught of schedule-and soul-crushing lines at TSA security checkpoints. Back in May it seemed as if travelers might be in for a prolonged quagmire of unknown duration at the country’s airports.

The TSA and American Airlines are about to launch a joint test of new, partially automated screening checkpoints at a handful of the airline’s hub airports.

Flying ultra-low-cost airlines like Spirit and Frontier means a bare-bones experience in many ways, not all of them expected. While most customers know they’ll be shoehorned into no-legroom seats in exchange for rock-bottom ticket prices, they are often surprised to discover a less-publicized tradeoff: Neither Spirit nor Frontier participates in the TSA’s PreCheck program for trusted travelers.