Airlines to Check No-Fly List More Often

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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Boston.com is among the sources reporting a change in how often airlines are required to check their passenger lists against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) no-fly list.

The change requires airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours instead of the previously required 24 hours of receiving notifications of changes to the list. As with many TSA policies, it’s a reactionary measure—this time in response to Faisal Shahzad, the man charged in connection with the Times Square attempted bombing, who was caught after boarding but before take-off on a Dubai-bound Emirates flight.

Information sharing works only as quickly as it can be processed, so ensuring that airlines are comparing passenger manifests against the most current no-fly list on as many flights as possible makes sense. Because as we saw, closing that 22-hour gap can make a difference.

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