Jad Mouawad

Security lines at airports are getting longer — much longer — and wait times could reach epidemic levels when air travel peaks this summer.

After a prolonged slide that took oil prices within sight of the $20-a-barrel threshold last month, sentiment in commodity markets seems to have turned, raising the question of whether oil prices have finally bottomed out.

Helped by falling oil prices, airlines are reporting record profits, but for many passengers this sudden bonanza has meant little more than extra bags of free peanuts and pretzels.

A train carrying highly flammable crude oil derailed and erupted into flames Wednesday morning, forcing the evacuation of a small town in North Dakota, according to local and federal officials. The fire was the latest in a string of accidents and explosions involving oil trains in recent years. It occurred less than a week after the federal government outlined its plans to improve the safety of highly hazardous train traffic.

Kerry's Kitchen is where Casselton residents gather for gossip and comfort food, especially the caramel rolls baked fresh every morning. But a fiery rail accident last month only a half mile down the tracks, prompting residents to evacuate the town, has shattered this calm, along with people's confidence in the crude-oil convoys that rumble past Kerry's seven times a day.

With air travelers increasingly feeling like packed sardines, flying has become a contact sport, nowhere more than over the reclined seat.

One of the largest cruise ships in 1985 was the 46,000-ton Carnival Holiday. Ten years ago, the biggest, the Queen Mary 2, was three times as large. Today's record holders are two 225,000-ton ships whose displacement, a measure of a ship's weight, is about the same as that of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

The rules on when to turn off electronic devices on airplanes have long been a sour, and sometimes contentious, point for travelers. But faced with a surge of electronics on airplanes and under pressure from a growing number of tech-savvy - and increasingly tech-dependent - passengers, the Federal Aviation Administration recognized that change was inevitable.