First it was loose change in your pockets, then it was jewelry, and then it was shoes. For Jet Blue passenger Nancy Kates, it seems like bras might be the next thing to go in the airport security line. A big-busted woman, Kates was wearing a large underwire bra as she went through the security check at Oakland International Airport but when it set off the metal detector she was pulled aside by a TSA agent.

Kates accuses the agent of getting a little too personal. "The woman touched my breast. I said, 'You can't do that,' " Kates said. "She said, 'We have to pat you down.' I said, 'You can't treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.' "

Refusing to be fondled, Kates asked to see a supervisor and then the supervisor's surpervisor. Kates reminded the TSA agents that the Constitution bars unreasonable searches and that "scrutinizing a woman's brassiere is surely unreasonable." She was offered a private room to have her pat-down, but Kates refused. Instead she asked if she could simply remove her bra, to which the TSA agent agreed. This isn't the first breast related TSA incident, but the whole escapade took 40 minutes and caused Kates to miss her flight. Jet Blue was nice enough to put her on another one.

Being a woman, I myself have had the bra pat-down several times, and I'm sure there are other fellow females on the Gadling team that have gone through the same experience. Normally such pat-downs are off limits to fingers; TSA agents only use the side of their hands. But all the same it's still a little unnerving. As Kates said, "If I was carrying nail clippers and forgot about them, I wouldn't have gotten so upset. But here I was just wearing my underwear."

What are your thoughts? Is it humiliating to get a pat-down to make sure the underwire in your bra is what's setting off the metal detector?

Yesterday's news brought the welcome breath of new life to Columbus ever since Skybus did us wrong, jilting us like an uncaring, unfeeling lover.

I heard in a radio news broadcast that AirTran Airways will begin flights between Columbus and Atlanta, Fort Myers and Orlando starting November 6. As the news commentator noted, this does not mean there will be a rush on low cost airlines to Columbus. Jet Blue, for example, has been there and done that.

Still, when I think of how Jet Blue used to be here before Skybus RUINED IT, I feel like Kate Winslet, almost frozen to death, floating on that piece of wood after the Titanic sank, hoarsely crying out, "Come back. Come back."

I'm glad that AirTran has noticed that Columbus is a viable market for folks going to Florida. If you've ever been in Columbus, Ohio between January and April, you'll know why folks are eager to get out of here and head south. The gray skies make this a place to leave if ever the chance arises.

If only AirTran wasn't bailing out of Newburgh, New York and would make that a Columbus connection as well, I'd be ever so thrilled.

According to this article in the Columbus Dispatch, AirTran has been one of the best managed airlines in the past nine years. Skybus was exactly the OPPOSITE. I'm still stinging from the break-up.

There's still no word on whether U.S. Airways has managed to sort out a horrific customer relations breakdown, after it kicked 274 of its passengers out of the Punta Cana International Airport in the Dominican Republic's last Friday in the face of Tropical Storm Fay.

U.S. Airways had to cancel its flight from Punta Cana to Philadelphia due to the storm, which had caused the delays of several other flights. Also, some passengers have told television stations that U.S. Airways reps said crew members had run out of hours and therefore could not fly.

Now, the airline will certainly point to its contract of carriage, which states that it is under no obligation to put up stranded passengers and pay for their food in the event of weather delays.

However, it appears the manner in which passengers were treated could have been handled a bit, well, better.

Armed guards were sent in to evict the passengers from the airport, even though none had other accommodation secured. Reportedly one passenger came close to getting arrested after demanding answers from airline staff.

There were no hotel rooms available in the area, and passengers reportedly slept on a bus.

This weekend they were still struggling to get back to Philadelphia as U.S. Airways flights from the Dominican were severely overbooked.

The Consumerist has some video and a few eye witness reports.

A Las Vegas woman was hauled off a JetBlue flight in handcuffs last week for shooting video of two other passengers having a loud argument.

Marilyn Parver of Las Vegas says that after settling the altercation, started by a male passenger arguing with the mother of an unruly kid, JetBlue crew members combed the cabin asking for witnesses. When Parver told crew members that she had filmed the fracas, they brought her back to the galley to view the video. They then asked Parver to delete the footage.

She refused.

As she recounts what followed to a Las Vegas area newspaper, the crew accused her of intending to put the film on YouTube. They said she had illegally operated an electronic device during the flight (though the plane was at cruising altitude).

Crew members then said a directive had come from the captain ordering her to delete the film.

Parver, 56, asked to speak to the captain. The crew refused. They said if she didn't delete the video, federal agents would be waiting for her when the plane landed in Vegas.

They were. Declining to give in, Parver was taken into custody and led off the plane. Somewhere between the plane and the arrivals counter, Parver says, the charges against her had ballooned into taking video footage of the cockpit (because those doors are always open), the galley and other parts of the plane.

The Feds, the TSA and a JetBlue representative looked at the video and decided it was harmless. Still, the JetBlue rep demanded that the video be deleted or Parver would be banned from future JetBlue flights and her name circulated among other airlines as a undesirable passenger.

It all ended pretty badly for Parver. The authorities were about to let her go when she made the mistake of demanding people's names. A Vegas police officer told her to leave or be arrested. She said, "Arrest me."

Parver went to jail -- though it looks like she wasn't arrested -- before her husband arrived and sprung her.

JetBlue Airlines says it is looking into the incident. Parver has sent angry letters to the airline, the TSA and a host of other agencies.

The search function on Flickr flat out stinks. But imagine if you can categorize all the photos into a geographic collage, recreating real-life in 3D. Microsoft managed to do that with Photosynth, in which they stitched together photos from different users of the same building into a sort of souped-up diorama.

This is version 2, and you won't believe your eyes (but here's proof, in painfully academic prose, otherwise).

Successfully hydrating on airplanes has recently become difficult; as an adult you can no longer bring beverages aboard. And apparently even babies have the same problem, or at least it seems so after an incident concerning a mother breast-feeding her child last week on WestJet.

The Vancouver woman says that she was asked to cover up while breast-feeding during a recent flight, and that the incident has led her to consider filing a human rights complaint. After "discreetly" lifting her shirt to breastfeed her son, a flight attendant offered the woman a blanket to cover up. She declined twice, but the flight attendant insisted
"She said that some men find the sight of a bare breast quite offensive," said Ms. Tarbuck. According to the report, she wasn't even bothering the people around her; the only other people in the row were her husband and two children.

Despite what your beliefs are on breastfeeding, let me just put it this way: traveling with children is difficult, maybe we should cut these mothers some slack. Do you really want to be enduring the sounds of a hungry, crying baby during the duration of your flight???

If you flew British Airways between the U.S. and England from August 11, 2004 to March 23, 2006, you may be in luck. BA was caught charging passengers a fuel surcharge that went beyond the actual cost of the gas. The scandal also involved Virgin Atlantic, so travelers who flew with that airline during the above dates are eligible to get in on the action.

Don't start getting excited or jumping up and down like you've won the lottery. The maximum refund per person will be around $20. Still, that's four beers or five lattes or a fairly decent haircut (in some cities).

Those who are eligible for a refund can apply online with their ticket info, passport number, or frequent flier card. Those who didn't fly BA or Virgin can still feel good because, for once, big airlines got caught with their hands in passengers' pockets.

With most airlines going out of their way to cut costs and nickel and dime passengers with added fees, it might not be the last time something like this happens.

Several BA and Virgin execs involved in the surcharge scandal will be doing some hard time after being charged with fraud.

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A few days ago Josh brought us a report about U.S. Airways beginning to charge customers for water -- bottled for now.

On August 1, U.S. Airways introduced fees for beverages like soda, juice and water that used to be free.

U.S. Airways is the first domestic carrier to go this route. Other carriers are all but guaranteed to follow suit soon.

It's pretty much a fact of life flying in America these days: If it's on board, it's going to cost you.

That is, unless you feel like making a big fuss about it.

Airline passengers have an ally against these seemingly trivial beverage charges: Flight attendants, the majority of whom are adamantly in favor of revoking them.

The New York Times reported the other day that the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the major flight attendant union, is objecting to charging the $1 and $2 for nonalcoholic drinks. The union went a step further: If a passenger objects, flight attendants probably will just give them the drink for free.

"We're trained to keep order on an airplane and defuse confrontation," Mike Flores, president of U.S. Airways' chapter of the union, tells the Times. "If it take giving a free beverage to somebody to do that, so be it. I expect there will be flight attendants who just give everything away."

A U.S. Airways spokesman tells the Times that the airline has advised its 6,700 flight attendants to "err on the side of the customer" when making a decision whether to defuse a confrontation by handing out a free beverage.

So, there you have it folks: A major domestic carrier saddling its employees with a new fee policy that they do not want to enforce, and in many cases likely won't in the end.

The Washington Post had an interesting article yesterday detailing new border search policies that the Department of Homeland Security recently made public.

The policies are for two DHS agencies -- U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- and allow federal agents to seize your laptop computer and other electronic devices -- like iPods, PDAs, hard drives -- take them to an off-site location and keep them for an indeterminate amount of time, the Post reports.

And there doesn't have to be any suspicion of wrongdoing for this to happen. It can be random and arbitrary.

"The most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers and other electronic devices. Searches have uncovered violent jihadist materials as well as images of child pornography," says DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in a recent Op-Ed for USA Today.

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," the Post quotes the DHS.

What's more, the policies give the government the power to share your data across multiple agencies outside the DHS, and even with private entities, for things like translation and data decryption.

The DHS says it is making efforts to protect things like attorney-client privilege and sensitive corporate material. However, as the Post reports, little thought has has been given to protecting everyday people's financial and medical records.

I've been contacted by the disabled Delta passenger with muscular dystrophy who says she was forced to crawl off two different Delta flights on July 20 after wheelchairs were not available when her flights landed.

She was traveling Harrisburg --> Atlanta --> West Palm Beach.

I posted about the incidents on Wednesday.

Her name is Julianna Dombrowski, and she is a 53-year-old retired accountant who lives in the West Palm Beach area of Florida. She has muscular dystrophy and lives in a house with no stairs.

She agreed to answer some follow-up questions from Gadling.

We wanted to clarify exactly what happened, at least in her own words rather than through third parties. Some readers have suggested that Dombrowski requested her wheelchairs after the flights in question landed, which would explain why none were waiting. Also, semantics or not, some readers are questioning whether Dombrowski really crawled off her flights, or merely struggled to get off them by herself. I agree with this distinction in this case: While both are horrifying and not acceptable, the image of a disabled person forced to crawl certainly is more disgusting to consider and has the power to drive a level of angry reaction in people that perhaps exaggerates what really happened.

I've also been contacted by a few Delta flight attendants who say they know what really happened on these flights. None so far have agreed to go on the record.

Below is what Dombrowski had to tell Gadling.