If you’ve had TSA PreCheck for a long time, you’re well aware that the queues, and waits, have slowly increased. It even got to the point that TSA even changed their advertising to sound as if the “new normal” was an OK thing.
Of course, I get it – having more people vetted as “trusted travelers” means more people can get through the security clearance area faster. So for the past several years TSA’s been pushing harder and harder for more people to apply and get the status.
They also offer TSA PreCheck to these groups (after being vetting, of course), some for free, some not:
- Visitors from select foreign countries are allowed to apply for PreCheck. They do have to pay for this, the same as most Americans.
- Children age 17 and under whose parent/guardian have TSA PreCheck (they can go through PreCheck for free, if they’re with their parents)
- Certain Hazardous Materials Endorsement (HME) holders get TSA PreCheck for free
- Active military and DoD civilian employees get TSA PreCheck at no cost
So it’s no wonder why the queues are so long.
Personally, I don’t care if any of the above groups get TSA PreCheck – it all “makes sense” to do so. But what doesn’t make sense is giving it to people who have (A) never asked for it and (B) never paid for it.
History: Managed Inclusion
Years ago, the TSA had a program called Managed Inclusion. Started in 2011, it was a system whereby passengers who they (the TSA) felt were low risk were able to get PreCheck status on their boarding pass, even though they had never been vetted to be a Trusted Traveler.
In 2015, the program was supposed to be phased out because of safety reasons.
But in 2018 part of the program – the one where they lt unvetted people into the PreCheck queue, was still running. That was also the year the government wrote a bill to get it abolished. It was approved by the House, but not the Senate.
Managed Inclusion today
If you search for the term “Managed Inclusion” in a search engine nowadays, you’ll see many references to the “phase out” of 2015. But nothing about what’s happening nowadays. Which is a shame, because some form of Managed Inclusion (perhaps using another name?) is reportedly still happening. Here are some anecdotal experiences:
- Elderly people tend to get it on a regular basis (when my husband’s father was still alive, he and his wife, both senior citizens, used to get it quite a bit. Neither of them had ever applied for PreCheck)
- Younger (read: not elderly) adults who don’t have PreCheck but are traveling on the same reservation as someone who has PreCheck, are sometimes issued PreCheck
- Adults whose flight reservations were made as part of a group reservation (say, several people from the same company going to a work-related conference) have been known to have PreCheck on their boarding pass, even if individual members
- Still other adults have just been given PreCheck randomly
Why this is not a great thing
For safety
Obviously, people are innocent until proven guilty. But a flyer isn’t necessarily “innocent by association,” either. Not that it’s epected an 80-year-old passenger has plans to set off a bomb on a plane. But these people who are given the status randomly? Or because they’re part of a group? Or their brother-in-law made their reservation for them? That’s playing with fire.
For time management
Most people who have TSA PreCheck know what they need to do when we get to the kiosk. But we learn that from repetition. Anyone who’s never been through the PreCheck queue before might still be fiddling with taking their sweater off, removing their computer and liquids from their bag, etc., because they’re not familiar with the process of going through PreCheck.
So now that queue, which is already getting incrementally slower, is now slowing down even more.
I’m not a fan. But they haven’t asked me, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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2 comments
Although I now have TSA Precheck, there was a time when I was regularly getting it without having applied. After visiting Vegas annually since the mid-80s, I began getting Precheck on boarding passes to / from Vegas during a certain time period but NOT on any flights to other cities. I assumed they had picked up on my annual trips and decided I was not a threat. But I was ‘unknown” for flights to other cities and did not get Preccheck.
Yet, FAA air traffic controllers don’t automatically get access to TSA Pre lines. It’s crazy they are excluded.