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Go USA Card launches, a perfect Corporate Gift and Employee Incentive, brings USA Travel Attractions to Nine major US Cities for One Low Price.
November 2, 2005 (Boston, MA) - Travel enthusiasts this holiday season will unwrap the power to enjoy the best of nine cities across the U.S., thanks to friends, family and corporate gift-givers. Smart Destinations' Go USA Card is the first product...
RoomSaver.com Travelers Prefer More Than One
September 21, 2005- A recent poll of RoomSaver.com's Travel club members reveals that the majority of the respondents prefer to take more than just one trip per year, stay more than just 1-2 nights per trip, and travel with at least one other...
Travel Shanghai China
Travel Shanghai China, An amazing city. I live, work, play in Shanghai, China’s largest city, largest port; a city of 16 million people, (many millions more during holidays and festivals), a city wanting to be the biggest, best and most important...
Why Buy Travel Insurance?
When you choose to travel, you take the risk of lost luggage, flight cancellations, reservation cancellations, theft and many other situations which may cause anxiety. Planning a vacation is stressful enough without having to worry about something...
World Travel - Hints on how to do It
If you have set your mind on traveling around the world, you
might run into the difficult task of having to make a hard
choice: where do you want to go? The multitude of destinations
and travel options is great, but it is also something that...
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Will You Be a Trusted Traveler?
Editor: The following article is offered for your free use providing the Resource Box at the end is included.
WILL YOU BE A TRUSTED TRAVELER?
By Laura Quarantiello
© Tiare Publications
404 words
Security checkpoints have become a genuine pain for air travelers. Where once you could breeze right through the
x-ray scanner and head for the boarding gate, now you must endure careful checks of your carry-on luggage and perhaps even of your person. It's the legacy of September 11th and a
necessary step toward keeping air travelers safe. But the delays are increasing and passengers are grumbling. Frequent flyers,especially, are complaining about the slowdown and the hassle caused by long security lines.
Enter the Trusted Traveler program, the brainchild of an airline industry committee working on ways to improve airport security. With Trusted Traveler, anyone who wanted to forgo long airport security lines would authorize the government to conduct a
background check and take their thumbprint or an iris scan of their
eyes. Once cleared, they would receive an identification card encrypted with their "biometric ID." Airports would have reserved checkpoints where passengers could present their card, have their fingerprint or iris scan matched to the card's information, and be passed through to the boarding area. This type of prescreening would reduce lengthy lines and let frequent travelers avoid much of the current airport hassle. "From my perspective, it makes
more sense to subject the people I know a lot about to a lesser degree of security and the people I don't know anything about to a greater
degree of security. It just makes a lot of sense to spend the finite amount of security resources we have on the folks who are unknown," says Dirk C. McMahon, Northwest Airlines Senior Vice President for Customer Service.
Experts say that the Trusted Traveler program won't appeal to everyone. Those who fly infrequently won't need to go through the rigorous background checks necessary to be labeled a trusted
traveler, and those with something to hide or those with concerns about privacy won't want the government checking their bona fides. For frequent travelers, however, the program could mean valuable minutes saved, hassles avoided, and a smoother airport experience.
For now the program is just an idea; the Air Transport Association is working on a proposal for the Transportation Security Administration and the Homeland Security Department that it hopes will put a 90-day pilot project at Northwest and Midwest Express using already-screened airline personnel into operation by the end of the year. If all goes according to plan, the Trusted Traveler program could be in place at Northwest
by mid-2003.
(end)
About the Author
Laura Quarantiello is a freelancewriter specializing in air traveland the airline industry. She is the author of “Air-Ways:The Insider’s Guide to Air Travel.
http://www.tiare.com/airways.htm
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