Origins of the road trip

The first recorded road trip was attested in stele in the court of Ramses II. He was said to “come down on the Medeans in his chariot after driving allnight from Memphis.” Road trips were important throughout antiquity. Alexander’s march into India was described by the historian Nearchus. During the Roman Republic, it was not uncommon for young patrician men to gather together to tour the Roman world. Jung even identified the Road trip as a persistent element of human culture.

Although the modern road trip can trace its roots to post-WWII America, road tripping in general began long before The Great War.

The first successful North American transcontinental trip by automobile took place in 1903, and was piloted by H. Nelson Jackson, Sewall Crocker, and a canine by the name of Bud. The trip was completed using a 1903 Winton Touring Car, dubbed “Vermont” by Jackson. The trip took a total of 63 days between San Francisco and New York, and cost US$8,000. The total cost included items such as food, gasoline, lodging, tires, parts, other supplies, and the cost of the Winton.

Alice Huyler Ramsey in 1909

Although many would make the trip after 1903, the first woman to cross the American landscape by car was Alice Ramsey and 3 women passengers in 1909. Ramsey left from Hell’s Gate in Manhattan, New York and traveled 59 days to San Francisco, California. Ramsey was followed in 1910 by Blanche Stuart Scott, who is often mistakenly cited as the first woman to make the cross-country journey by automobile East-to-West (but was a true pioneer in aviation).

Expansion of highways
For more details on this topic, see U.S. Route 66.

New highways in the early 1900’s helped propel automobile travel, primarily cross-country travel. Commissioned in 1926, and completely paved near the end of the 1930’s, U.S. Route 66 is a living icon of early modern road tripping.

Motorists ventured cross-country for holiday as well as migrating to California and other locations. The modern road trip began to take shape in the late 1930’s and into the 1940’s, ushering in an era of a nation on the move. roadtrips consist of a trip lasting three hours or more
The modern road trip in North America

The 1950’s saw rapid growth of ownership of automobiles by American families. The automobile, now a trusted mode of transportation, was being widely used for not only commuting, but leisure trips as well.

As a result of this new vacation-by-road style, many businesses began to cater to road-weary travelers. More reliable vehicles and services made long distance road trips easier for families, as the length of time required to cross the continent was reduced from months to days. Within one week, the average family can travel to destinations across North America.

The greatest change to the American road trip was the start, and subsequent expansion, of the Interstate Highway System. The higher speeds and controlled access nature of the Interstate allowed for greater distances to be traveled in less time and with improved safety as highways became divided.

An abandoned gas station off of Interstate 8 in Arizona.
Road tripping today

Today, modern road tripping is a fast growing hobby, and not just a means of vacationing. Groups dedicated to the art of the road trip, known either as professional road trippers or road enthusiasts, are becoming prevalent online.

Road tripping, to some, has indeed become an art. Road enthusiasts frequently debate on proper gear, attire, and electronics. Other frequent debates include type of road trip (a ‘moseying’ road trip vs. a set schedule), use of in-vehicle DVD players to pacify young passengers, and, to a lesser extent, destinations.

Professional road tripping has spawned other activities, including dashboarding, caravanning (multi-vehicle road trips), RV-ing, county collecting, welcome sign photography, and other facets of the road tripping hobby.
The Road Enthusiast

Those who look upon road trips not as a method of travel but rather a hobby frequently describe themselves as Road Enthusiasts or Professional Road Trippers. These motorists take the concept of road trips very seriously, some have devoted time and resources to the pursuit of the hobby. Although there are many personalities in the Road Tripping Community, many road enthusiasts advocate sharing the roadways, preservation of historic places and natural spaces, and safe driving. Much like backpacking, many road enthusiasts also subscribe to the ideas of Leave No Trace.

The goal of road trip enthusiasts is to experience the culture, nature and history of the route, and to celebrate the open road. Road trippers often study roadology, the connection between of roads and culture.
Road trip technology
RV road trip promotional poster created to encourage participation by friends

One topic of frequent discussion amongst professional road enthusiasts is the latest road tripping technology. This includes new technology, as well as some old familiars. Items of frequent discussion include mobile internet, cellular phones, laptops, GPS units, Digital Mapping Programs, CB/Wireless Radios, and of course, vehicles. With the advent of larger vehicles, such as minivans and RV, more individuals are now able to participate in a road trip without adding additional vehicles.

International road trips

Road tripping, or motoring, is not only an American hobby, it is enjoyed the world over. Although the history of road trips may be different in each country, the idea, concept, and methods remain relatively unchanged worldwide. For this reason, it can be fairly easy to conduct a road trip on foreign soils. Some travelers from European countries, and Australia, go to the United States to take part in the American idea of a road trip, although generally Europeans will explore the wealth of culture offered within Europe. Frequently Americans travel abroad to travel foreign motorways and experience the distinct mix of cultures that can be seen driving around (often in a circular direction) Europe. Canadians, like Americans also engage in road trips taking advantage of the large size of their nation and close proximity to destinations in the United States. Unlike some other methods of travel, the automobile allows travelers to customize their trip and set their own pace.
Impact of automobile associations

In many countries Automobile Associations play a major part in facilitating long distance road trips. Automobile Associations, such as AAA and CAA in North America, AA in the United Kingdom, among just a few, provide their members with services and materials to make road trips more enjoyable. Many of these groups offer some sort of Roadside Assistance, coming to the aid stranded motorists, as well as travel materials, such as guide books, maps, destination guides, and even road trip gear. Such associations allow a motorist to venture further from their home, and as long as they are in an area serviced by the association or an affiliate, can use the local association for booking lodging or entertainment tickets, roadside assistance, or get new travel guides and maps. This allows travelers to have a sense of comfort that they will have access to these services when they travel.

TORONTO - A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region of Canada on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and homes and businesses were shaken from Canada’s capital in Ottawa on south to an arc of U.S. states.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Morgan Moschetti, a seismologist with the USGS, said it was not unusual for an earthquake to be felt 300 miles (482 kilometers) from the epicenter and noted that the latest quake was felt in the U.S. from Chicago to Maine.

Other states that reported feeling tremors were Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York.

The epicenter of the quake was in Quebec, about 23 miles (38 kilometers) north of Cumberland, Ontario, on the Ottawa River, the USGS said.

The agency said the quake occurred at a depth of about 12 miles (19.2 kilometers) at 1:45 p.m. EDT (1741 GMT). The agency initially said the quake had a 5.5 magnitude, but later reduced it to a magnitude-5.0.

The tremors, which lasted about 30 seconds, rattled buildings in Ottawa and Toronto, as well as government offices across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Quebec.

The Parliament building in Ottawa was evacuated, with workers sent home while the building was inspected. Workers also left buildings in Toronto.

The quake came just ahead of the weekend summit of G-20 and G-8 world leaders in Toronto and Huntsville, Ontario.

Melanie Lauzon, a Liberal member of Parliament, said her first thought was that Ottawa had been hit with “with a very large car bomb,” since the quake struck on the eve of the summits.

Conservative Senator Lowell Murray said the massive chandeliers of the upper chamber of Parliament began swaying during a mundane debate on energy issues.

“Initially we thought it might have been an airplane crashing into the building,” Murray said. “But we were standing around wondering what was going on. And I quickly realized it was an earthquake. And then everybody started shouting out, out, out.”

Residents of a number of states in the Midwest and Northeast reported feeling the earthquake.

In Ohio, people reported the sound of plaster cracking in Cleveland and buildings in Cincinnati gently swaying.

In Cleveland, James Haselden says his office in a renovated 19th century brick building swayed and he heard plastic cracking but saw no damage.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on its website that the Canadian quake was felt by some residents in the western Pennsylvania area.

The quake also was felt in New Jersey, where the Bergen County administration building in Hackensack was evacuated after employees reported they felt a tremor.

Bergen County Police Lt. Christine Francois said numerous people in the Hackensack and Englewood areas called police to report earth tremors.

In Michigan, residents from suburban Detroit to Port Huron and Saginaw reported feeling the earthquake.

Detroit police spokeswoman Yvette Walker told The Associated Press that police personnel on the upper floors of the downtown headquarters building reported feeling the quake.

In New York state, people from Buffalo to Albany and north to Massena on the St. Lawrence River said pets were startled and plates rattled when the quake hit.

New York City officials said police received emergency calls came in from all over the city about shaking buildings, but there were no reports of damage.

David French, 53-year-old state worker from Cicero, New York, said he was at his computer inside his home near Syracuse when he felt his chair shake.

“I thought the chair was breaking or something,” he said. “I looked over and my filing cabinet was moving.”

The quake prompted several calls to state police in the Adirondacks area.

“A little shake, nothing too big,” is how Trooper Mark Revette described the temblor. “It happens. We get a couple of these a year.”

Kellie Tassone, 40, was at home on Oneida Lake in Cicero.

“My dog picked his head up just before it happened and kind of looked at me,” she said. Then the sliding door started to rattle “and the house was shaking.”

The USGS said the two largest quakes in western Quebec occurred in 1935 at magnitude-6.1 and in 1732 at a magnitude of 6.2, where it caused significant damage in Montreal.

The agency said earthquakes cause significant damage in the region about once a decade. Smaller earthquakes are felt three or four times a year.

From: Yahoo News

Ronnie James Dio, legendary vocalist for Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell and Dio, has died after a battle with stomach cancer, according to his wife, Wendy Dio. He was 67 years old.

The heavy metal singer died early this morning. He was being treated at M.D. Anderson in Houston.

A rumor circulated Saturday night on Twitter about Dio’s death. His wife quickly shot that down: “He is not doing well, but he is not dead.”

His wife released a statement to blabbermouth.net today:

“Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45 a.m. [on Sunday] 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away.

“Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all.

“We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us.

“Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss.

“Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.”

Dio spoke just a month ago during an awards ceremony about dealing with chemotherapy and his prognosis:

Tobi Oyedeji, a high school senior and Texas A&M basketball recruit, died Sunday in Houston. According to the Houston Chronicle, Oyedeji was involved in a car accident just past 6:00 AM after attending prom. He was 18.

Oyedeji was a star basketball player at Bellaire High School and had signed to attend Texas A&M in the summer. An only child, the power forward was first-team All-Greater Houston during the most recent basketball season and was a top 100 recruit at Rivals.

According to MyFoxHouston, Oyedeji’s car collided head-on with an SUV Sunday morning. The driver of that vehicle was killed at the scene. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.

Texas A&M basketball coach Mark Turgeon issued a statement on Sunday:

“The world has lost a great kid today. Tobi epitomized the term student-athlete. He was a very good student. He worked hard in the classrooms and on the basketball court and he was a terrific basketball player. This is difficult to understand and today is a very sad day. My heart aches for his mom and dad. Tobi was an only child and I would like everyone to pray for Tobi’s parents.”

The Aggies coach also wrote several tweets about Oyedeji’s passing, calling on fans to pray for the teenager’s parents:

News of the Taliban arrests emerged as the US special envoy to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, met Pakistan’s prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, in Islamabad Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters

Pakistan has arrested two more senior Afghan Taliban figures, it emerged yesterday, raising the possibility that ­Islamabad has begun a major strategic shift away from backing “good” militants.

Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Muhammad, the “shadow governors” of the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan respectively, were captured in recent days inside Pakistan.

In a stark illustration of the domestic terrorism problems facing Pakistan, a bomb blast yesterday at a mosque in the north-western tribal belt killed 29 people, including some militants, and injured about 50 others. The explosion tore through the mosque in the Aka Khel area of Khyber, a local official said.

Islamabad has always been viewed as a reluctant partner of the west in Afghanistan, as it was believed to be secretly continuing to support the Taliban and host its leadership on Pakistani soil, despite officially breaking with the militant movement after the 9/11 attacks.

But this week it was revealed that Pakistani authorities had arrested the deputy leader of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi and, when news of the two other Taliban arrests emerged, many analysts argued that a new Islamabad policy could be crystallising.

A more cynical interpretation suggested that, instead of turning its back on the Taliban, Pakistan was simply pressuring them to the negotiating table.

By weakening the Taliban, Islamabad could force the militants into cutting a deal that would still give it some measure of power and a strong say in Afghanistan’s future. “I think it’s a bit early to call it a strategic shift, but clearly the political calculations in Pakistan are changing,” said Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani military at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based thinktank. “The idea being they can play a role in getting the US to communicate [with the Taliban].”

The flurry of arrests does raise the question of why Pakistan’s military intelligence did not do this earlier. “They seem to have found their old address book,” quipped one senior US official in the region. Aside from the Taliban arrests, Pakistani officials also said that up to nine militants linked to al-Qaida were held in overnight raids in Karachi, with the help of intelligence provided by the US. One was identified as Ameer Muawiya, who officials said was in charge of foreign al-Qaida militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal area and was an associate of Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan’s powerful army and especially its military Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which runs policy towards neighbouring Afghanistan, had appeared to be keeping the Taliban going, in expectation of the day when western forces leave Afghanistan and the extremist movement could return to power, beholden to Islamabad, as it was before 2001.

“I think a shift is taking place inside the military,” said Khalid Aziz, head of the Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training, an independent thinktank based in the north-western city of Peshawar.

“At the end of it, if the old model had continued into a post-US withdrawal situation and Pakistan had continued supporting the good Taliban it would almost certainly end up as a civil war in Afghanistan.”

Renewed civil war in Afghanistan would blow over to Pakistan, especially its tribal area and North-West Frontier province, which is populated by Pashtuns, the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

In a speech this month, Pakistan’s army chief, Ashfaq Kayani, claimed he had brushed aside the doctrine of “strategic depth”, which meant controlling Afghanistan to stop Indian influence there.

“If Afghanistan is peaceful, stable and friendly, we have our strategic depth because our western border is secure,” Kayani said.

Backing the Taliban in the past has also come at a massive domestic cost, as the movement spawned a copycat group in Pakistan that is even more violent and has squarely targeted the state. More civilians were killed in terrorist violence in Pakistan last year than in Afghanistan.

According to the official governor of Kunduz province, Mohammad Omar, the “shadow governors” were arrested in the Pakistani city of Quetta within the last two weeks. The so-called Quetta shura, or leadership council of the Taliban, is supposed to be based in that city. “This [the arrests] is because of the pressure of the world community on Pakistan, and the explosions happening inside Pakistan, the crisis in Pakistan,” said Omar.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the US was pleased with the recent arrests. He declined to say whether they were the result of better intelligence or an increased willingness by Pakistan.

“What I will say to you, yet again, is that we are enormously heartened by the fact that the Pakistani government and their military intelligence services increasingly recognise the threat within their midst and are doing something about it,” Morrell said.

The 67th Golden Globe Awards was telecast live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Sunday, January 17, 2010 by NBC, from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM (PST) and 8:00PM - 11:00 PM (EST) (01:00-04:00 Monday January 18 UTC). The ceremonies were hosted by Ricky Gervais,and were broadcast live for the first time.

Nominations were announced on December 15, 2009. Among films, Up in the Air led with six nominations, followed by Nine with five and Avatar and Inglourious Basterds with four each.Matt Damon, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, and Anna Paquin were each nominated twice, Damon as Best Actor in the comedy category and as Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, Bullock as Best Actress in both the comedy and drama categories, Streep competing against herself as Best Actress in the comedy category, and Paquin as Best Actress in a TV Drama Series and as Best Actress in a Television Film or Miniseries.

Television programs receiving multiple nominations include Glee, Dexter, Damages, Mad Men, House, and 30 Rock.

Martin Scorsese was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures.

Schedule

As of January 17 2009:

Nominations and winners

Winners in bold.

Cecil B. DeMille Award

Martin Scorsese

Film

^[6]

Television

Awards breakdown

Number of nominations

Actors

• 2: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side, The Proposal)
• 2: Matt Damon (The Informant!, Invictus)
• 2: Anna Paquin (The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, True Blood)
• 2: Meryl Streep (It’s Complicated, Julie & Julia)

Films

• 6: Up in the Air
• 5: Nine
• 4: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds
• 3: The Hurt Locker, It’s Complicated, Invictus, Precious, A Single Man
• 2: (500) Days of Summer, Brothers, Crazy Heart, The Informant!, Julie & Julia, The Last Station, Up

Television

• 4: Glee
• 3: 30 Rock, Big Love, Lost, Damages, Dexter, Georgia O’Keeffe, Grey Gardens, Into the Storm, Mad Men
• 2: Entourage, House, Hung, The Office, Taking Chance, True Blood

Number of wins

Films

• 2: Avatar, Up, Crazy Heart

• 1: Up In The Air, The Hangover, Precious, Julie & Julia, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds, Sherlock Holmes, The White Ribbon

Television

• 2: Dexter, Grey Gardens
• 1: Big Love, Taking Chance, 30 Rock, Glee, Mad Men, The Good Wife, The United States of Tara

Presenters

• Amy Adams
• Christina Aguilera
• Jennifer Aniston
• Justin Bartha
• Kristen Bell
• Halle Berry
• Josh Brolin
• Gerard Butler
• Cher
• Bradley Cooper
• Chace Crawford
• Robert De Niro
• Cameron Diaz
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Colin Farrell
• Harrison Ford
• Jodie Foster
• Matthew Fox
• Jennifer Garner
• Mel Gibson
• Lauren Graham
• Tom Hanks
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Sally Hawkins
• Ed Helms
• Kate Hudson
• Felicity Huffman
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Nicole Kidman
• Jane Krakowski
• Ashton Kutcher
• Taylor Lautner
• Zachary Levi
• Sophia Loren
• Paul McCartney
• Helen Mirren
• Jim Parsons
• Amy Poehler
• Julia Roberts
• Mickey Rourke
• Zoe Saldana
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Steven Spielberg
• Kiefer Sutherland
• Mike Tyson
• Sofia Vergara
• Olivia Wilde
• Kate Winslet
• Reese Witherspoon
• Sam Worthington

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Hendrick Motorsports has loaned an airplane and two flight crews to an organization that is participating in the Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

The NASCAR team loaned a 45-passenger plane to Missionary Flights International, which will send support teams in and out of Port-au-Prince. The first flight is scheduled to leave Fort Pierce, Fla., on Saturday morning and will take 30 passengers and medical supplies into Haiti.

The HMS aviation team is planning to fly at least one roundtrip per day, with no timeline set on how long the plane and personnel will be on loan. The eight-team crew consists of HMS aviation director Dave Dudley, four captain-level pilots, one mechanic and one flight attendant. All volunteered to participate.

HMS officials have a second plane on standby, and team owner Rick Hendrick is covering all costs associated with the flights.

Hendrick officials said Friday they received a special exemption from the FAA to fly the plane into Port-au-Prince.

The international Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in the earthquake, which devastated the Caribbean nation on Tuesday.

KARACHI: On the directives of Minister for Environment Shaikh Mohammed Afzal, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Waste Management Cell Karachi visited various industrial areas on Saturday. The cell members visited SITE Industrial Area, Keamari Town, Jinnah Bridge and Terhi Goth. Warning the concerned town administrations and industry managements, the Vehicular Emission Control Programme project director said action would be taken under EPA laws for dumping garbage and burning it. He also said all such industrial areas where garbage was being burnt were bound by the law to neither dump garbage there nor set it on fire. The cell members have served a notice to a paper mill for violating EPA laws and summoned the administration officials to the authority’s office.

MIRPUR/KARACHI: At least 15 people, including mourners and policemen, were killed and over 100 injured when a suicide bomber ripped through a Muharram procession near an imambargah in Muzaffarabad on Sunday as another explosion near a Muharram procession in Karachi injured 35 people, according to police.

In Muzaffarabad, a suicide bomber blew himself up when intercepted by security personnel guarding a Muharram procession. The procession was passing close to a police barricade in front of the imambargah on CMH Road at about 6.30pm when the bomber struck, a senior police officer told APP. At least 15 of those injured are in critical condition.

The gathering attracted about 1,000 people, said police officer Tahir Qayum. Those killed included two policemen, he said.

The AFP news agency quoted police as saying that the bomber was trying to enter the imambargah. Panic ensued the blast, which flung a severed leg and other body parts across the ground outside the imambargah as the power went off, said witnesses.
“The bomber came in front of me. He was accompanying the procession. Police searched everybody on the gate and the bomber blew himself during the body search,” said Atif Bashir, a medical storekeeper with a bandaged forehead. “All of a sudden the electricity cut. There was panic and people were crying for help,” he told AFP at the bomb site.

Security was put on high alert across Azad Jammu and Kashmir following the attack, and the army was called in to assist the civil administration in maintaining law and order.

Karachi bombing: In Karachi, police - on the basis of the bomb disposal squad’s findings - claimed that the explosion was triggered by a build up of gas in a manhole, but doctors who treated the blast victims said they found pellets in the bodies of the injured, suggesting that an explosive device was detonated.

The blast took place at around 6:30pm when the procession, which started from Orangi Town No 10, was on its way to Orangi No 2 1/2. staff report/agencies

International airports were scrambling yesterday to tighten security on U.S. flights, causing passenger chaos on the busiest travel day of the year, in the wake of Christmas Day’s foiled attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane.

U.S. President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, ordered a review of security protocols and the no-fly list to determine how a man with explosives strapped to his body boarded a flight weeks after the man’s father contacted U.S. authorities to warn them of his son’s growing radicalism.

Jammed airports were a scene of bedlam yesterday as travellers were left waiting in line for hours and rushing to make alternative plans as a slate of ramped-up security measures disrupted connecting flights and slowed departures to a crawl.

But nothing better demonstrated the heightened anxiety in the skies than a case of airsickness that became a national security incident.

When a Nigerian man locked himself in the airplane’s bathroom for about an hour yesterday on the same Amsterdam-Detroit flight that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up on Friday, staff on board asked for emergency assistance.

As it turned out, the “disruptive passenger” was a sick businessman who needed to use the washroom. Authorities said yesterday he posed no threat.

In the meantime, travellers in and out of the U.S. are facing stringent security screenings, pat-downs and restrictions on their on-board movement for the foreseeable future, after Friday’s close call was averted only by the adrenaline-driven bravery of passengers on the 278-person flight.

Although a Vancouver Airport spokeswoman said the new security measures, put in place this weekend, will last at least until 2 a.m. Dec. 30, neither Transport Canada nor the U.S. Transportation Security Administration would speculate on how long these new measures would be in place or what would replace them.

In the meantime, the emergency measures were causing pandemonium at airports across Canada yesterday. Passengers faced waits as long as seven hours as they went through lengthy body searches and painstaking checks of slimmed-down carry-on bags.

Reports from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport that security protocol had been followed correctly raised further concerns that would-be terrorists are moving to exploit an overlooked gap in passenger-screening measures.

It’s reminiscent of Richard Reid’s attempt in 2001 to blow up a plane with the same explosives hidden in his shoes, and, more recently, of a 2006 transatlantic plot to blow up 10 flights from Britain to the U.S. and Canada using liquid explosives. Many of the heightened restrictions prompted by that incident have since been relaxed. But terrorism experts say this latest near-miss could force security authorities to re-examine the way they evaluate threats posed by passengers, and prompt even stricter incarnations of no-fly lists previously criticized for grounding innocent travellers.To simplify airport chaos yesterday, personnel were asking passengers to refrain from bringing carry-on bags with them at all, although few complied and departure lounges were scenes of chaos as harried travellers packed and re-packed their luggage.

A Canadian Air Transport Security Authority screener at Toronto’s Pearson airport said yesterday CATSA staff in the U.S. departures lounge was almost doubled yesterday, and staff were being paid overtime to go through hands-on screenings of tens of thousands of frustrated passengers.

Despite staffing increases to accommodate the confusion, dozens of flights were delayed and several airlines had to cancel flights simply because the new screenings meant travellers weren’t getting through the airport fast enough.

At 5 p.m. yesterday, American Airlines had cancelled 16 of its 36 flights scheduled for that day - largely due to the security measures that a spokesman said was forcing them to “thin out” the schedule.

Air Canada and its affiliate Air Canada Jazz cancelled several short-haul U.S. flights, most of them out of Toronto, due to security delays.

Mark Hansen, a Berkeley professor specializing in aviation security, said the pat-downs now being implemented are helpful but are likely a stop-gap measure, to be replaced with better high-tech ways of detecting non-metal weapons like the plastic explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) that Mr. Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to detonate on Friday.

But he noted it’s also possible this will prove a temporary flare-up in airport-security paranoia.

“The history is that these things do subside - there’s an immediate reaction and then, as time goes on, the memory fades and the reality of the invasiveness and the inconvenience of strict screening persists. And so we eventually move toward a system that is less stringent.”