On Topic: Better safe than sorry

Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it.

On a recent return trip from visiting relatives, I politely asked a Transportation Security Administration agent who was shouting out instructions about carry-on items to long queues of travelers if we'd need to remove our shoes to get through this airport's checkpoint.

'Yes. Always,' he replied. He said it as if I'd asked if we'd be required to have tickets to board one of those big shiny things with wings.

So I figured, OK, as the lines weren't moving forward with any great speed and we're chatting about the topic anyway, I smiled and offered, 'Well, not 'always' …

.'

'Yes,' he barked in his best laying-down-the-law voice, 'always.'

I was about to continue — intending to cite the many occasions in numerous other airports in recent years in which we'd been informed it wasn't required that we take off our shoes (usually after I'd already removed them) and sometimes even jackets — including for the initial leg of my trip from Cedar Rapids to get to this very airport. And I'd hoped next to inquire how such determinations were made.

But that's when my wife slugged me in the back and whispered, 'Stop it.'

Fair enough.

To be clear, I'm not making light of what's become a very serious business. But I'm not sure what that TSA agent imagined he might find hidden in a small handkerchief in the way of passenger- or airplane-harming objects.

I suppose most anything is possible anymore. And I get that airports — complex business operations, after all — need to move large numbers of people, with widely differing travel savvy, and at the same time keep customers — the passengers and the airlines — safe and reasonably happy. That's no easy task.

But I do wonder about the widely varying precautions in airports today, some 15 years after Sept. 11, 2001. Are the differences in relation to the size of the airports? My own anecdotal observations would suggest not — but, again, what do I know?

It certainly makes sense for big, international airports to insist on extremely tight checkpoints. My wife and I were at Charles de Gaulle International in Dec. 23, 2001, the day after Richard Reid had departed from that Paris airport with the intention of blowing up his shoes as well as the plane he and its 197 Miami-bound passengers and crew were flying in. No-nonsense soldiers with rifles patrolling gates and gift shops made complete sense then.

What are the rules? Are we more or less safe with what appear to be a sliding scale of security at different airports? It could be comforting to know as we move into summer and peak travel season.

Here is some of what the TSA's website states: 'TSA has evolved from a one-size-fits-all security screening approach to a risk-based, intelligence-driven strategy designed to improve both security and the passenger experience.'

So far so good.

'TSA officers may use risk-based security measures to identify, mitigate and resolve potential threats at the airport security checkpoint. These officers may ask you questions about your travel to include identity, travel itinerary and property.' That sounds sensible, too, for post-9/11 travel.

But here's where we get into, let's say, discretionary waters:

'TSA may use a variety of screening processes, including random screening, regardless of whether an alarm is triggered. In addition, TSA uses unpredictable security measures throughout the airport, and no individual is guaranteed expedited screening.'

There it is: 'unpredictable security measures.' Maybe airports switch up what will be required on different days or at different times. Keep travelers with malice aforethought off-balance.

So we can be prepared to remove our shoes, or not, as we take to the — hopefully friendly — skies. As long as we follow the rules. Even if they seem to change.

--

And speaking of travel, 'tis the season we traditionally drive our internal-combustion engines all over creation, and low gas prices have been more than encouraging. But those dollar signs at the pump have started climbing — they surpassed $2 a gallon nationwide before Memorial Day, at $50 a barrel for the first time since August of last year.

Aside from everything you've read about prices being kept low by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to make times tough for the United States's burgeoning shale industry — which is true, by the way — among other artificial maneuvers, there's this: Oil companies in America and elsewhere have been reducing output — and exploration — because of the aforementioned slide in gas prices. The most basic business principle is you can't keep the doors open if you don't make a profit, right?

We'll probably still enjoy low pump prices through Labor Day, energy CEOs and others told the New York Times last week. But they predicted prices will creep heavenward by 10 percent or more over the next 12 months.

So, to paraphrase an old WWI saying from the trenches, drive 'em while you can.

Michael Chevy Castranova is Sunday business editor of The Gazette, among other things. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com