Yes, TSA, after 11 years, has figured out that they don’t have to search everyone.
And the drill is so much easier. Leave liquids in the bag, leave shoes and belt on. Leave computer in the bag. I’m through in no time and loving it. The only down side is having to wait for my wife on the other side. But I find ways to amuse myself.
SWMBO and I have it. We both had it print on our pass going to Orlando. Coming back, she got it, I didn’t. I complained about it to the lady at the United desk at the gate. She was nice, but she couldn’t help. I currently have a complaint into United corporate about it.
It doesn’t make any sense at all to split people traveling on the same ticket purchase.
Anyone else have to go into the TSA office for the interview?
It was a weird experience for me. I was taken into a small room and told, not asked, told to turn my cell phone off and to watch a looping video about Global Access and Pre check. After a half hour, I was ushered along a winding path into another room where an agent asked me some of the exact same questions I included in the written application, in addition to whether or not I’d been to Canada within the last four years. Canada? Yes, Canada. Don’t ask. I don’t know why. He asked me where I work and what I do for a living.
I then had to place the four fingers of my right hand on the glass of a contraption with a green light shining up through it. I did the same thing with my left hand. The agent asked if I had any questions. I said no and was told I’d receive an email with my ID number within 48 hours and my ID card in 2 to 4 weeks. I was then ushered through another winding path out of the TSA facility. Like I said, it was weird. I don’t know if I could find the office I was interrogated in again if I had to on my own, and I suspect that was by design.
The “interview” such as it was took approximately 5 minutes. All told, I was there approximately 45 minutes. Painless but very weird.
Yeah, I had to do the interview. My interview was at the Ronald Reagan building in DC. This building houses the HQ for a government agency that is my emplyer’s main client. I was seated with some people from that agency when the TSA guy processing my application looked up and said “Mr. Madmonk, you ever been arrested?”
Uh, let me come up to your desk and discuss the events of a certain night in Baltimore, it’s nothing that would be ineresting to these fine folks.
Complaint won’t help, it is not the airlines who determine who actually gets the pre check screening pass, they can put you on a list that will let the system see if it will give you the TSA Pre stamp, but the final decision is made by the system on a somewhat random basis. I have global entry and am on the trusted traveller list, but in the 50 flights I have taken this year it has not come up once. Seams that there is a difference in the various systems on how they handle my middle name, and the green card has it one way, the global entry another and the airline frequent flyer a third. If your names in the TSA pre check system does not match other documents, you won’t get the pre check pass.
Been doing the precheck thing for a while now. My usual airline sent me an email ages ago about the then future program. I clicked a link, and then a long time after that I learned that the program was live. No fee.
I fly a lot, and TSA Precheck puts a smile on my face every time I use it. I hate futzing with shoes, belts, liquids, and laptops, and I would rather not spend 15 minutes even in the “priority” line. TSA Precheck gives me 100% smooth sailing through security (as in: I almost don’t have to break stride on my way from the curb to the concourse.)
A nice recent change is that the boarding pass says right on it if you’re cleared that day or not, saving you a little hassle if you got randomly rejected and have to go to a different line. The “sorry, not today” rejection seems to happen 10% - 20% of the time, IME.
The best is when you get precheck on your boarding pass but it turns out that airport doesn’t have precheck yet! Oops.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant!
Yes, the interview requirement consists of them saying, “So, why would you like to join this program?” and that’s pretty much it.
I suspect it’s more for them to make sure you are who you say you are by having an agent meet you in person.