Airports

A Dutch journalist has exposed a loophole in airport security after carrying several liters of liquid on a transcontinental flight to Washington, D.C.

Alberto Stegeman and two colleagues carried six Bacardi rum bottles filled with water aboard flights from Amsterdam to London and then on to Dulles International Airport. The ruse was pretty straightforward, too. They bought the one-liter bottles at the a duty free shop in Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport a week before their flight. Then they returned home, emptied the bottles and filled them with water.

It seemed like the perfect flight: An on-time departure from San Francisco, an expected early arrival in New York and smooth air. It all changed when Thanksgiving weekend congestion throughout the Northeast forced my plane to circle over Pennsylvania and New Jersey for at least an hour. Once we landed, my fellow passengers going on to Washington, D.C. were certain they wouldn’t make their connection.

SPRUCE CREEK, Florida — While rolling down a broad street in a small community in central Florida, Paul Miller saw a friend walking on the sidewalk and pulled over to chat. It’s the kind of thing that happens every day. But what makes this instance unique is Miller was in a Lancair IV, a sleek home-built single-engine plane. In this community, it happens all the time.

Welcome to Spruce Creek.

With airport security tighter than Autopia’s travel budget these days, anyone passing through an airport will almost certainly get up close and personal with the Transportation Security Administration. A new iPhone app lets you easily and instantly give the TSA a piece of your mind without the nuisance of being dragged into an interrogation room while handcuffed.

So, how’s your journey home for the holidays going? If you’re among the thousands traveling anywhere on the East Coast during the past 36 hours, it’s probably been a cross between The Divine Comedy and Raft of The Medusa. A whopper of a storm dumped more than 2 feet of snow on much of the Mid-Atlantic region, bringing travel essentially to a standstill.

Blame it on the planes isn’t the latest Milli Vanilli spoof, it’s one man’s $555 million claim that the local airport drove off his wife and kids. Stanley G. Hilton’s lawsuit blames everybody and everything shy of the rain, moon and stars for the end of his marriage. Given his record, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re listed on his next court filing.

One of the things I’ve found difficult during this trip is typing on planes. It’s not the plane itself that makes it difficult. Turbulence may convert words into new ones, the person in front of me may recline too quickly and put a crack in my laptop’s case, but those are minor inconveniences. The bigger issue is the person next to me.

I’m nearly two weeks into my trip, and I’ve had the pleasure of sitting next to some interesting people. One was an engineer working on San Francisco’s new Bay Bridge. Another was a PR director for the United Football League. I’ve also been next to some more, uh, eccentric individuals who are interesting in a different way. They range from neurotic to inappropriate to downright bizarre.

Tony Stewart is staring at me. So are Kyle Petty, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt (Junior and Senior) and legions of other NASCAR drivers past and present whom I’ve never heard of. They look down from the walls and up from the tables. I’m sitting in Dan DuVall’s Stock Car Cafe in Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, taking advantage of his and his son Josh’s hospitality after my trip took an ugly turn Saturday in New York.

It’s 12:15 in the morning, and I’m sitting outside on a concrete bench in Burbank, California.

That’s 12:15 a.m. Pacific time. Keeping up with local time has become more or less irrelevant during this trip. I started off on Central time, but the combination of rarely spending more than two days in any one region and the erratic schedule of airports has left me living in my own time zone.

Circadian rhythm? Nah. Five hours on an airport bench, one waiting at the gate for a flight, two more on the plane.