I’m sitting in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, waiting for my 50-minute flight back to Fort Wayne. I’ve been in Phoenix attending the MinistryCOM conference, a really wonderful event. I haven’t flown since November 2002, just after the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) took over all airport security. My, a lot has changed in that time. Here are some of my observations and experiences from this trip.

• I used etickets for the first time. Booked everything through Orbitz by myself. Very nice. Orbitz sent voicemail to my cellphone with each leg of the flight. For instance, after arriving in Chicago, an Orbitz voicemail informed me that the Fort Wayne flight was on schedule, and told me the gate number and time of departure. I never had to produce tickets anywhere. Nice.
• I loved the self-checkin stations. Swipe a credit card, and the machine identifies you. Put in your flight number, and it calls up your itinerary. Indicate how many bags need to be checked, and then the machine prints out your boarding passes for each leg of your trip.
• In Fort Wayne, I set off the alarm several times, and the TSA guy waved me over to a section for wanding and frisking. At that point I was in my socks, cargo shorts, and polo shirt. No watch. No cell phone. Nothing metal in my pockets. The guy asked me if I had a prosthetic implant, like a fake knee. I said no. A few seconds later, he asked again, “Are you sure you haven’t had a surgical implant of some kind?” I think I might remember something like that. Anyways, a guy came and explained exactly what he would do, and said that when he frisked me, he would only use the back of his hand. Which, of course, made it perfectly okay for a guy to run his hands over my body. The problem turned out to be the multiple snaps in my cargo shorts. Fortunately, I didn’t need to remove my shorts.
• The TSA employees were very professional and friendly. In Phoenix, the guy in front of me handed his boarding pass and a photo ID to the TSA guy at the head of the line. It wasn’t a good photo. The TSA guy asked if he could provide his driver’s license. The man pulled it from his wallet and said, “The photo doesn’t look anything like me.” The TSA official looked at the driver’s license, looked at the man, and then said, “Now I know why you gave me the other photo.” We all chuckled.
• The boarding passes have a group number on them. Instead of boarding by aisles, as they once did–“Now boarding aisles 23 through 35”–we board by groups. Group one is always frirst class, and they board first, the snooty elites. On the last flight, I was group two, and we were the rows in the back. So they don’t go in order, from front to back of the plane.
• On the flight to Phoenix from Chicago, a three-hour flight, all of the flight attendants were guys. One, if he colored his hair entirely gray (it was already partially gray), would have looked like Taylor Hicks from Americdan Idol. And I would have asked him to show us a dance move.
• I had no trouble finding bin space for my carry-on laptop bag. In the past, people lugged aboard massive garment bags and anything else they could carry. I would get aboard early, lest all bin space be taken. But now that they’ve clamped down on carry-ons, I can board last and still have no trouble.