IN THE AIR

Airlines to Ask More of Passengers

Extra personal info should prevent watch-list mixups.

All who've been wrongly barred from flying thanks to a terrorist watch-list "mixup," take heart: On Saturday, U.S. airlines will start asking travelers to provide their birth date and gender under a new aviation-security requirement, in an effort to prevent no-fly-list confusion. The change comes as the Department of Homeland Security assumes responsibility for checking passenger names against government watch lists, The Washington Post reports. Airlines will forward the personal details to the Transportation Security Administration, to clear up situations in which travelers have similar names as those on terrorist lists. The information will allow 99 percent of travelers to avoid delays, officials said. The new requirements will be implemented between now and March 2010; once the program is fully up and running, passengers who don't provide the info could be denied boarding passes.