This morning's Winging It column gives TSA credit for doing a better job, and notes improvements, including family lanes at all airports, that should help ease checkpoint congestion during busy holiday periods. For those who come here first, here's a link to the column. Here is link to the PHL Web site for a news release on the airport's award-winning food-and-beverage program.

When you read through the column, you'll find an anecdote from my own experience that needs expansion. Here's what I'm talking about: In one instance, I found one of the "black diamond" security lanes for experienced travelers slower than a family lane next to it. A reader e-mailed me this morning, saying give a break and some understanding to the business traveler that needed five bins for all his carry-on stuff, now that most airlines are charging for checked bags. For the record, that experience happened to me in June, before fuel prices soared and most airlines except Southwest and JetBlue adopted fees for the first checked bag, and the traveler was a Southwest passenger.

Tell me more ... feedback always welcome.

An assortment of groups with an interest in Southwest has been making news day today. Some of its employees are unhappy at the pace of union contract negotiations and are doing informational picketing to send a message. Then Fitch Ratings says it's concerned about Southwest's debt and downgraded its credit rating to BBB-plus from A-minus (still better than most airlines). In the meantime, in Denver, Southwest seems to be flying high, It's grown since it started there in early 2006 at an even faster pace than in the city that it once called it's fastest-growing. That would be PHL.