At one time or another the Transportation Security Administration has been virtually every frequent flyer’s favorite punching bag. Not without reason. TSA has played a game of catch-up ever since it was formed in those frantic, do-anything days just after September 11. The play calling has been erratic, and willingness to modify the game plan unconscionably absent. 

Now, under new leadership, the agency is beginning to get things right—adjusting in weeks, rather than years, to new realities. A couple of cases-in-point: liquids and the Registered Traveler program. 

When TSA Assistant Secretary Kip Hawley semi-lifted the blanket ban on non-medical liquids, aerosols and other squishy things September 25, the agency demonstrated it had learned something, that it wasn’t afraid to backtrack when it makes sense.

Now, toiletries less than three ounces are no longer taboo. Flyers can pack them into one clear, quart-size carry-on and bring ‘em on board—just as they can beverages purchased from post-security concourses.

That U.K. probe, of course, is the one investigating a purported plot to blow up as many as 11 airliners bound from the United Kingdom to the United States. The alleged plotters, officials contend, wanted to do it using binary liquid explosives, explosives disguised as beverages.

The Air Transport Association, the airline industry’s lobbying group, applauds the move. “It is clear that TSA has performed deliberate and careful risk analysis to identify which items passengers can safely bring on board,” ATA President and CEO James C. May says.

While the U.K. investigation played the primary role in rescinding the blanket banishment, there’s a sub-plot—one in which frequent flyers have been prime actors: The checked baggage system was cracking. In some cases quite badly.

Take what happened to this writer in late September. My wife and I were traveling from Atlanta to D.C. to see our daughter. I took a carry-on, devoid of anything that wasn’t solid. Kathy checked her bag, stuffed with lotions, toothpaste, shaving cream and such. On the way back from Washington to Atlanta, weather ravaged the East Coast. Our flight was delayed. Delta got us on an earlier departure out of Reagan National, assuring us the bag was on the plane.

You know what comes next.

On arrival into Atlanta, we shared a couple of special hours with hundreds of other passengers waiting at baggage claim to file a claim for lost luggage. Two days later, Delta said it was delivering the suitcase.

Beset by an unexpected barrage of bags by flyers who normally would have carried on, and exacerbated by the weather, the system simply couldn’t cope. Not just Delta’s, everybody’s.

It will be instructive to see the Department of Transportation’s mid-summer 2006 mishandled bag stats. The bet here is they aren’t going to be pretty.

Just in time to stave off a holiday season meltdown, TSA changed its tune, adopting a rhythm far more rational, and measured.

TSA did a similar re-take of its stance on Registered Traveler recently. Now that the fast-track security clearance system has already proven itself in Orlando, it’s ready for prime time at other airports: Cincinnati, San Jose, Indianapolis and JFK (at the British Airways terminal) among them. Problem is the agency wanted passengers to pony up nearly $200 per year for the privilege—about half the cost of membership to an airport club.

In the face of mounting criticism that that was way too high, TSA backed down, agreeing to charge a $30—instead of $100—to each flyer who’s designated a Registered Traveler.  

Soon after that word from TSA, Verified Identity Pass, the company that’s off to the fastest start in the RT race, announced that it was lowering the cost for the national rollout of its “Clear” program to ensure that the total price paid by flyers remains less than $100. Verified Identity Pass is absorbing the $30 TSA vetting fee to make that happen. 

$100 is a lot more reasonable than $200-plus. The more people who use Registered Traveler the faster TSA’s traditional security lines move. It all adds up. Rationally. Reasonably.

Those are two words egregiously missing in TSA’s first four years of existence. Thanks to Hawley, a few threads of common sense are beginning to find their place in the fabric of a badly frayed system.

It’s about time.