An English friend of mine got incredibly upset when I told him that these "security improvements" were a huge hassle and added little to security. He felt that I was being incredibly foolish and short-sighted in talking about how much it would cost both flyers and airlines to have huge delays at checkpoints.

But that's the truth. If people are too inconvenienced, they won't fly. If it costs $100M to put an armed air marshal on every flight using a jet, and the increased security delays cost airlines over $200M, which solution is the right one?

The "whining" is the voice of flyers who make the economy work. We do worse damage to ourselves by wasting everyone's time doing these useless security checks.