I thought I’d take a brief break from my new life as a parent to share the good news with all of you. We welcomed our son, Atticus, to the family on Wednesday. He weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs, 1 oz and was 20.5 inches long.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the guest posts so far. There’s another great week of guest posts coming next week and then I’ll be back the following Monday.

One reader has had the chance to experience the TSA’s PreCheck program. Here’s an update on things along with his experiences using the program.

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Tired of waiting behind the unwashed masses which never seem to be able to separate themselves from their bottled water, belts, liquids and shoes at security checkpoints? If you’ve put off submitting an application for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) trusted traveler program, you now have another reason to stop procrastinating.

The TSA has opened expedited screening lanes at several major airports around the country. The “PreCheck” program started with a limited trial at selected locations last October at DFW, Atlanta, Miami, and Detroit. Originally open only to top-tier American and Delta Air Lines passengers who were already members of one of the CBP’s Trusted Traveler Programs, PreCheck has now been expanded to include any passenger who holds Global Entry, SENTRI, or NEXUS approvals to enter the country.

More than 140,000 travelers have already been screened at the pilot checkpoints. The program was expanded recently to include passengers traveling on Delta from Minneapolis/St. Paul, American from Los Angeles International, and both carriers from Las Vegas McCarran. In January, US Airways Passengers will be able participate in the program at McCarran. United elite travelers will be invited to join in at some point in 2012 – approval is pending merger of Continental and United’s information systems are combined.

I’d been invited to join PreCheck last October as an American Airlines Premier Executive qualifying traveler. A last minute change of plans recently left me scrambling to catch a flight out of Miami on a stormy and congested Sunday night. Taking the finally-opened airport people-mover from the centralized car rental facility (a pleasant surprise), I checked in at an American kiosk and proceeded to the elite line at the airport’s D-Gates. After my boarding pass was scanned, I was directed to a nearly empty security line – another surprise – as I had been approved for expedited security screening.

Once at the screening checkpoint, I was told I did not need to take off my shoes, remove my belt, or my light jacket in order to pass through the screening device. I did not have to remove my “3-1-1” liquids from my carry-on bag, but I did have to remove my computer from the non-compliant bag. I was through security in under a minute, and on my way to the gate in time to download email before departure.

Qualifying for the Global Entry program requires applicants go through a fairly rigorous screening process in exchange for the right to bypass long immigration and customs lines at US International Airports. Anyone who has the correct credentials can now opt in to the PreCheck program by entering their clearance code in their airline’s security profile – as it is no longer necessary to hold top tier status once CBP approval has been attained.

According to US Transportation Security Administrator Joe Pistole, better information about travelers helps the TSA to say “Now, we don’t have to treat each person as a putative terrorist,” according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek.

While I usually feel most TSA employees act professionally while doing a very difficult and demanding job, I have to admit to wondering if some screeners DO assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Traveling with my 88 year old father at Newark last fall, for example, pre-warning about his artificial hips and other ailments did little to lessen interrogation procedures which seemed inappropriate at best, and extreme considering his physical condition. Terrorist, indeed!

Gaining approval in a Trusted Traveler program is not an automatic procedure, even for those who travel abroad frequently. The process includes capture of fingerprints (done neatly and digitally) as well as an iris scan. For those concerned about information captured from the microchip contained in today’s US passports, questions of privacy may prove to be enough to discourage registration. But compared to biometric data collected by other countries, the tradeoff might seem less onerous – I have saved countless hours of standing in line at increasingly congested gateways. The PreCheck program was an unexpected and welcome surprise.

Applicants should also be aware they will be subjected to an extensive, face-to-face interview at one of the TSA’s International Airport Offices. I faced a 30-minute interview inquiring into my reasons for travel to over 50 countries in the past ten years. As a self-employed individual, I also had to supply a copy of my most recent tax return. An unfortunately, I paid my own registration fee before American Express announced it would reimburse its Platinum Card holders for the cost of the Global Entry program – where approval is valid for a period of five years.

Would I register today knowing how much information was eventually collected? Certainly! It should also be noted there is no guarantee any given passenger will not face more extensive random security checks, whether entitle to PreCheck or not. With as much as I travel, the benefits easily outweigh my concerns – and with PreCheck expanding throughout the country, I’m looking forward to more pleasant surprises.

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Rob Lipman is Executive Vice President of Summit Management Services, an international meeting planning company specializing in pharmaceutical research and incentive programs. He logs approximately 200,000 miles a year and visits at least five continents annually. He is an avid Cranky Flier reader and professes to be in search of “new airline experiences” and the perfect flight.

Remember that October snowstorm and the meltdown that followed in Hartford? This woman and her husband were stuck in the thick of it. Here’s a great read about their experiences along the way.

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In late October, my husband and I enjoyed a fabulous vacation in Europe. We managed to see 4 different countries, caught up with friends, and experienced as much as we could in a short time. Little did we know what was in store for us on our voyage home.

Our flight from Paris to New York was circling in the weather when the pilot informed us we were heading to Hartford, Connecticut. We’d been in the air an hour past our arrival time, and the urgency to land was apparent. We finally landed in Hartford, being told we would get back in the air as soon as possible to get to JFK.

My husband and I turned on our phones and checked AA for our reroute. We found ourselves booked out of LaGuardia on Monday morning. It was Saturday. This COULDN’T be right. Angry, I called American and waited on hold for 20 minutes to find out most of the flights at JFK were canceled and Monday was clearly the best they can do for us right now. I was encouraged to call back. Irate, I hung up the phone. My husband and I started to process the information, and to understand the spot we were in. The snow was piling up on the wings. The captain gave updates:

430p: Pilot tells us we will be here for a little while to get refueled and then de-iced
5p: Pilot says we are next in line
530p: Pilot tells us they only have one fuel and de-ice truck working so it will be awhile. He also tells us if we don’t leave by 550p his flight day is done and we have to stay here in Hartford for the night. “In my over 20 years of flying planes I can tell you that I cannot take off with slush on the runway. Folks, I’m looking at an inch of slush on the runway and there is no equipment working to clear it.”
6p: Pilot tells us that we know we are here for the night and still no news on fuel or de-ice. The pilot seems more upset, but tells us the airline is working to find hotels for us.

At this point my husband got angry. The American app on our phone still showed us leaving LaGuardia on Monday morning, so he called American. We had a new strategy and asked about flights out of Hartford on Sunday. He was told the first flight we could get on was around 10p. This seemed absurd to us, he hangs up still angry but feeling better after doing something about it. This was a lesson we learned: Do something with your anger. Don’t sit and stew.

7p: Pilot tells us that there is only 1 international gate here and that there are no customs officials to deplane us. Therefore we have to stay on plane
8p: Pilot tells us that we will be heading to the gate to deplane.
820p: Pilot tells us that he isn’t sure if we’ll get to gate, he tells us getting information out of these people is like pulling teeth
9p: Pilot says we are going to head to another gate and then we will deplane and be held in the terminal area by that gate since we can’t go anywhere until we clear customs
915p: Pilot tells us that we will wait to get the international gate but we can not get off plane until everyone from the Swiss flight in front of us clears customs. All 300 of them.

At this point I was on the phone with American. I booked that flight out at 10p, hoping that when we got on the ground I could make something better happen.

We’d been given snacks and water regularly while we were sitting on the tarmac for 8 hours. The bathrooms were functioning. The mood was patient on the plane, which was surprising. In the row in front of us, a single mom had been entertaining her year-old daughter. This mother had worked HARD all trip, and the baby had been none the wiser of our predicament. We were honestly in awe of her patience and ingenuity to keep that baby happy. Lesson #2: It could still be worse. We were trying to get home to our own children, and could fully appreciate how different this experience would have been if our children were trapped there with us.

1020p: Pilot tells us that we are going to the gate
1025p: Pilot tells us the power is out in the terminal so the gate isn’t working, we will have to exit on tarmac
1050p: Doors open and we can deplane
11p: We enter customs area
1130p: We clear customs — without our bags. Can we even do that?
1140p: We get to baggage area and are told that our bags can’t be taken off the plane because they don’t have equipment at this airport for our size plane and shuttles will be coming to bus us to the other terminal
1150p: We bus over to other terminal
midnight: We arrive at terminal to find a spot to sleep
1215a: We are lucky enough to find spot where they are first giving out cots and sheets for sleeping
1230a: We settle in to sleep. Here’s a video of the sleeping situation in the ticketing area at the Hartford airport:

1a: 6’7″ 350 lb Bostonian decides to pull up a cot next to us and shake the windows with his snoring
2a: Windows still shaking and many people are awake
4a: We wake up for the day
7a: We get to American counter.

While in line to speak to the lone American employee, we witnessed some interesting drama. The Europeans from our flight got angry. First a few men were angry at the only employee trying to help us. Then they turned on themselves. A French lady in the crowd started chastising the lead man who was giving the employee a hard time. “It is not her fault!” she told him. The French lady brought calm to the crowd, and we resumed our spaces in line. The man in front of us sat next to my husband on the plane. We knew he was French and was trying to get to Cleveland. He gave the American employee a hard time.

He was put back on our flight, which left for JFK that afternoon, and arrived 45 minutes before his connection to Chicago, where he would then have to figure out his flight to Cleveland. She told him this was the best she could do. We also needed to get to Chicago, and when it was our turn we suggested the same itinerary. She admitted to us that there was no real chance of making that connection and thought our plan to fly from Hartford to O’Hare directly was a better one. She printed our boarding passes to Chicago. Lesson # 3 — being nice pays. We again questioned if we could get our luggage. She confirmed we would be abandoning it to fly home from there.

We took our tickets and passed through security 15 hours early…

11a: See there are 2 spots open on flight to Chicago at 2pm, I call American Airlines and get us booked…We will be home by 4pm
130p: We board the flight
2p: We take off for Chicago…
4p (Chicago Time): We land in Chicago!!!!

After some time had passed, we remembered more of the fabulous experiences on our trip and less about the unfortunate circumstances of our return. The airline had compensated us with vouchers and miles.

We will fly again, we have already booked a trip for the whole family. I will not boycott a single airline, because I saw planes from every airline I could fly stuck in the same predicament. I vow to fly directly whenever possible. We love to travel and experience new places, and this bad experience will not keep us from enjoying our hobby. We will be smart and prepared for our next trip in February. Wish us luck!

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Corry Stanley lives in the Chicago suburbs with her 2 and 4 year old sons, husband of nearly ten years, and two rescue dogs. She’s a native Wisconsinite, lifelong Packer fan, and an IT professional. She tweets infrequently at @corry_s.