New Jersey ? A Georgia man dashes through a checkpoint at the Atlanta airport and gets 10 days in jail. A hairdresser in a hurry bypasses security in Philadelphia and gets a $500 fine. A drunken man stumbles onto a Chicago airfield and gets 18 months’ supervision. All caused major air travel delays costing millions of dollars — and all got what critics call a slap on the wrist.

The recent shutdown of the Newark, N.J., airport after a similar breach is drawing calls for harsher penalties and highlights concerns about punishments not much worse than what someone would get for tossing a hamburger wrapper out the car window on the New Jersey Turnpike.

At least one senator wants to make such trespasses a federal offense. Other ideas include six-figure fines and flying bans, though security experts and traveler advocates doubt whether harsher punishments will deter anybody from breaking the rules. They suggest a better way to prevent breaches is by improving training of airport security staffs — and perhaps using new technology to help them.