Dallas ? Tina Lorraine shakes her head as she assumes what passengers now call the airplane pose. Her eyes grow big as gloved strangers dig through her carry-on, wand her with a hand-held metal detector, then ask for her shoes. Take them off, she’s told.

“I didn’t know it was like this,” the 26-year-old said before she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight at Los Angeles International Airport. This is the new airport environment post-Sept. 11. Almost a year later, passengers are still learning their way through the revamped lines and ticket counters and the beefed-up security checkpoints at the nation’s 429 commercial airports.

Port Authority Police Officer Paul Hadinger, left, and his bomb-sniffing dog, Renie, check the luggage of passengers at New York's La Guardia Airport. New baggage screening techniques were enacted after Sept. 11, 2001. Starting Dec. 31, airlines must check all bags for explosives.

Though inconsistencies remain in security procedures, those are on the decline, say passengers and airport security workers interviewed by The Dallas Morning News at nine U.S. airports between Aug. 21 and 25.

The last year has had plenty of embarrassing and aggravating security gaffes, from the countless terminal evacuations to the strip-search of a congressman to the woman forced to drink her own breast milk to prove it wasn’t flammable.

But most passengers and airport employees interviewed believe that the process is getting better.

Even Lorraine, who hadn’t stepped on a plane in two years, is grateful for the security.

“I do feel, like, a lot safer,” she said.

Many passengers have been frustrated with the time-consuming security measures as a whole. But what angered them most this last year is the seemingly arbitrary way in which they are applied.

One airport asks for a boarding pass and ID at a checkpoint; another does not. A belt buckle sets off the walk-through metal detector at one airport, then sails through another.

“If you roll up to security, you should know what you’re going to get,” said Sgt. J.P. Kolts as he guarded a United Airlines checkpoint at Denver International Airport. “Like McDonald’s or Burger King, they (passengers) should know what to expect when you’re coming here.”

The Morning News’ experience was telling. A bracelet set off the alarm at every checkpoint except the one in Boston. One privately employed screener in Los Angeles couldn’t speak English well enough to explain what she wanted as she inspected shoes. Another took the time to click each of the reporter’s three pens in and out.

Although all The News’ departures were late, one flight was missed and luggage was lost twice, none of those problems seemed tied to the new security procedures. In fact, what was most surprising was the speed of the security checkpoint process. At seven airports, it took five minutes or fewer.

The other two airports’ checkpoints still came in under 10 minutes the goal set by U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

The holdups now appear to be at airline ticket counters with random searches of checked baggage. Signs usually tell passengers where to check in but fail to explain the random baggage screening process.

Starting Dec. 31, all bags must be screened for explosives. The federal government has contracted engineers to work on those slow-moving lines. And test sites, including one at Dallas Love Field, are attempting to iron out the kinks in the checked-baggage screening system.

There’s so much change at the ticket counter, as airlines rearrange to accommodate the new security machines, that we found ourselves in the wrong lines in Washington, D.C., and Boston. In Atlanta and Dallas, we got errors when we tried to use the electronic check-in. A ticket agent said our one-way itineraries were to blame, but neither signs nor the computer alerted us to that.

Our longest wait? Twenty-one minutes at the Southwest Airlines ticket counter in Los Angeles. The new security measures slowed the lines. But the $19 one-way fares to Las Vegas packed LAX with passengers, many of them frequent fliers headed for a quick lunch to rack up enough trips to earn a free ticket through the airlines’ Rapid Rewards program.

Those cheap airfares also are attracting a new kind of passenger who hasn’t flown in at least a decade and isn’t familiar with airport procedures. That’s a challenge for security officials.

The good news? The new federal screeners in place at three airports visited are winning over security-weary passengers with an efficient, courteous manner.

Sure, passengers complained. But they admitted that procedures from airport to airport were more consistent than a year ago. We agree.

Critics predicted that the American passenger’s patience would give out by now. During our trip, however, we found most people tolerant. As one female passenger in Los Angeles put it before boarding her plane: “The alternative is worse.”