I agree.....but for the casual photographer that might be a lot
more bother and more expense than he's willing to pay.

You or me is probably another story and worth the investment
of advance shipping.

Max -

I traveled extensively in my former career as an engineer - over
1,750,000 air miles including every continent except Australia and
Antartica.  I learned early on that the inspection process is not logical
- there was the inspector who insisted on looking between each of the 100
or so sheets of paper in a note pad.  I also learned the value of
inspection - and I don't care to repeat the experience of having to slide
down the escape chutes in an emergency evacuation of an aircraft that is
reported to have a bomb on board.

I've carried a camera in my briefcase on every trip since 1978.  In every
instance, the camera and a few rolls of film - either HP5 of T-max 400 -
were in a lead bag.  In about 20% of the instances, the presence of the
lead bag triggered a hand inspection.  My practice was to always allow
enough time for my briefcase to be manually searched if the inspectors
wanted to do that.

In North America, and in most parts of Western Europe and Asia, the
amount of radiation that your film will be exposed to on the course of a
trip will not cause significant damage to EI 400 film.  And contrary to
the assertions of some on these news groups - it is simply not possible
for the inspectors in these parts of the world to "turn up" the x-ray
machine when they see the shadow of the lead bag.  They can increase the
intensification of the image on the monitor, but for safety reasons they
cannot increase the level of x-ray radiation.  I wouldn't assume that to
be the case in more primitive areas of the world, however.