Frequent fliers wear their protest

I suppose it was inevitable. Someone has started selling T-shirts and baseball jerseys with a picture of a plastic bag of carry-on articles under the headline "Kip Hawley is an Idiot!"

Hawley is chief of the Transportation Security Administration, the agency responsible for instituting first the outright ban of all liquids inflight, and then the 3-3-1 travel policy (maximum 3-ounce containers carried in a single, quart-sized zip-top baggie). Seasoned business travelers tend to be critical of the policy, and they are raising their voices in an increasingly organized way.

The shirts, selling for around $20, are the symbol of a burgeoning activism among frequent fliers who consider the rules a waste of time. Recent threads on flyertalk.com describe frequent travelers gleefully donning the T-shirts as a tease to test the reactions from TSA airport workers.

"Superguy", a United Premier Executive and self-described member of ASS — (the "Anti-Shoe Carnival Society") — writes in a post last Sunday about wearing the shirt upon arrival at Reagan National Airport. "I was quite surprised by the reaction I got from TSA at DCA. They stopped me as I went through, read my shirt, and laughed hard. They asked me where I got the shirt ... It at least showed me those guys thought the rules were stupid.''

If this all seems a bit juvenile, remember that this little protest movement got started because one traveler thought his first amendment rights had been violated. In September, after the TSA changed from its "no liquids" policy to the current one, frequent flier Ryan Bird was fed up.

He wrote the phrase, "Kip Hawley is an Idiot!" on his toiletry zip lock bag. Instead of getting a laugh, TSA staff detained him at the airport. On his Web site, Bird claims the TSA told him that his first amendment rights of expression did not apply when going through security. Other travelers started mimicking Bird's baggie protest; a movement was born.

And every movement needs a T-shirt.  

Write to: Barbara Correa at bboydstoncorrea@yahoo.com