Fall is the time of year when many people in the industry travel to trade shows and annual association conventions. Visiting with customers and suppliers and renewing old acquaintances with channel partners is one of the great perks of working in this industry. Getting to each event is another story.

Tighter security measures and restrictions on what we can carry onto planes have made air travel more difficult than it used to be.

Much of what’s being done to preserve our safety seems ludicrous. Like the time I watched an airport screener pull aside an 80-year-old grandmother to pat her down for weapons. I guess he thought she fit the profile of a radical international terrorist. Or the time a screener patted the ankles of my teenage daughter, who was wearing shorts and flip-flops. Maybe he suspected she had an explosive device surgically implanted beneath her skin.

Airlines also apparently don’t have as many luggage throwers (oops, that’s baggage handlers) as they used to. I’ve had more baggage lost by airlines in the last 18 months than in my previous 20 years of flying.

One thing you never want to do is challenge the authority of an airport screener. A man recently was detained at the Milwaukee airport for about 25 minutes because he wrote “Kip Hawley is an idiot” on a plastic bag that he passed through a security checkpoint. A screener spotted the bag and determined the message was a threat aimed at the Transportation Security Administration director, rather than a political statement about the folly of airport security.

Once, while checking into the Madison, Wis., airport, I took a shortcut through one of those zigzag-shaped cattle chutes leading up to the security checkpoint. Since there was no one ahead of me or behind me, I figured it would be OK. The TSA agent made me back up and weave through the entire empty queue.

Have you noticed that a high percentage of TSA employees are elderly, grossly overweight, or both? You’d think that someone in a security uniform would have to pass a physical fitness test.
But what do I know? I’m no expert on airport security. I’m just a guy trying to get to a trade show.

This editorial appeared in the November/December 2006 issue of Progressive Distributor magazine. Copyright 2006.