On my visit to Israel last week, I had the opportunity to experience security checks in 4 different airports: Boston, Rome,Tel Aviv and Amsterdam. My trip took place at the beginning of this year, about 2 weeks after the foiled terrorist attack on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Let me give you the lowdown

Boston: No extra security at all. No extra time in line. No sniffing dogs.From start to finish 5 minutes from the check-in counter to the gate.

Rome: What a mess. All transit passengers from all airlines and all locations had to pass through the transit area: a room where pushing and shoving was the norm... lines if you could call them that, were regularly rearranged depending on the pushing in back of you. Cutting into the lines was met with shouts and police moving these intruders to the back of the very long circuitous line.
Then upon arrival at the security check,there semed to be no rhyme or reason to the procedure...keep shoes on, take computer out, keep in or keep out those famous plastic sandwich bags...anyway, I made it.

Tel Aviv: A police check at the entrance to Ben Gurion Airport.Then a long ride around the outer road to get to the entrance to the terminal. Once inside the terminal, the in your face interview takes place as you wait in line to put your luggage through the Xray machine...What were you doing in Israel? Where were you? How do you know Hebrew? Where do you live? What's your Hebrew name? For those of who pass the test (and most do) you proceed to the Xray machine and onto the ticket counter. For those who don't pass the test, a thorough search of suitcases is followed by more interrogation.

Amsterdam:They are trying to adopt a new method of security check. I arrived from Tel Aviv and proceeded to the Delta gate to await my flight back to Boston. At each airplane gate bound for the US, passengers must once again wait in line to be processed through. Once one gets to the front of the line, someone (and I am not sure who these someones are)asks you a few questions, then you go through the metal detector, and are patted down. Already in place but not functioning are those infamous body scanning machines which apparently leave nothing to the imagination. And finally another check of your hand luggage.

Travelling was always a tiring ordeal...and even more so now! Bon Voyage!