My friend - a frequent flyer on WN - asked me to check him in for a flight last weekend. The system spit back a rejection notice, i.e. cannot process online, see gate agent. Hadn't seen this before, neither had he (and he's flown dozens of times since 9/11 on various carriers).

When Mr. Phillips arrived at the airport, he learned that his name - a fairly common one - has been added to the no-fly list and he will have to manually checkin at the counter - forever He flew Alaska later in the week, same story.

Of course the sympathetic counter agents told him that he could write the TSA, but we all know how well that process works.

So now thousands of Phillips will be inconvenienced because some bozo in DC had the brains to add a name from the top 100 to the no fly list. And apparently there is no way for the system to figure out which one is the bad guy except through a manual search when the checkin desk telephones the TSA official with his ID info. Score 1 for bureaucrats, 0 for common sense.