Precheck is different. What's going on there is that occasional fliers are nervous about flying and scared that there will be terrorists on their plane, and find security theater reassuring. Whereas frequent fliers just want the old pre-9/11 experience without security theater. Precheck gives everyone what they want, pre-9/11 for frequent fliers and post-9/11 for nervous fliers.
I don't think it lines up with anxiety like that. Frequent fliers know that people of a certain ilk couldn't possibly be the villains and deserve to skip all this horseshit. The villains will be in with the masses. Infrequent fliers know that they couldn't possibly be the villains, but don't want to spend the time/money/wherewithal to figure out how to skip it.
Those who believe the bullshit will always suspect brown people, regardless of which line they're in. Those who don't believe the bullshit will not necessarily use that to base their decision on whether to skip the bullshit.
This can be the less stressful thread for those who can only absorb bite-size pieces of the stressful thread at a time.
If you tried to just make everyone have precheck (ie the status quo pre-9-/11) that's be massively unpopular. Normies like the inconvenience!
3: Thanks. It's been a week even before today.
I applied for global entry renewal 5 1/2 months ago and it's still "pending review" even though we're traveling next weekend and I was previously approved*. I even asked my congressperson's office why that would be and they said there's nothing that can be done about DHS service.
On the water park- so we're they actually running the ride below capacity just because not enough people had paid extra to fill the fast lane slots?
*there's a grace period if you apply for renewal before your old one expires but I forgot because it expired in the pandemic. Still don't know why I'd be so hard to run a background check on if they did it five years ago.
The Lincoln Airport doesn't have TSA Pre, so I figure why bother.
6: Weirdly the US seems to have given up on customs due to staffing shortages. When we entered the country a few weeks ago there was passport control, but literally no one at customs and you just walked through.
One time in the past year at an airport with real-time waiting time displays I saw Pre lines slightly longer than general lines. One of those things that only works when fewer people have it, like cars?
No, precheck is better *even if the line is longer*. The point isn't to go through faster it's to not have to do all the stupid stuff (liquids out, laptops out, shoes off).
I like making other people smell my sweaty feet after I've walked all the way to the check point.
11: How does TSA Pre work now? I know sometimes I get it at random. Do you pay to get it every time?
Yes, you can pay to get precheck every time. If you travel internationally it's also good to know that precheck come for free with Global Entry (which also puts you in your own line at the border, though with increasing automation of the regular line this matters less), similarly if you travel often to Canada or Mexico over land there's a separate program for that which I think also come with precheck. Worth noting also that a bunch of travel credit cards will reimburse you the full cost of Global Entry.
There is no enforcement of traffic laws in the Bay Area in general anymore, so 85% of the cars I see in the HOV lane now are cheaters, but we still haven't reached a tipping point where everyone cheats. On the stretch of 80/580 I drive most often, the HOV lane requires 3 people in the car, so there is a nice pattern of traffic jams full of 2-passenger cars and the HOV lane full of solitary hotshots. I did finally snap and cheat the other day (with a passenger!), but I can't quite bring myself to do it habitually.
The best though is when they declare that all the regular lanes are going to be pre-check rules due to being understaffed and/or overcrowded. Suck it, fancy flyers!
Last time we traveled mine had expired but the family's hadn't so they went in precheck and I paid $15 for JetBlue "even more speed". It turns out that's a separate line from precheck and I got pissed off at the person in the precheck line who sent me all the way to the other side of the terminal for that line. It turned out that line was faster because fewer people. Also they were training a search dog there so you had to line up in twos carefully and walk side by side as the puppy frolicked around you and DO NOT PET THE PUPPY. Totally worth the $15.
That's too bad, they could increase tourism to Omaha is there were puppies at every security line.
8, 14 -- American Express gives you a credit for the fee for global entry. So, I "paid" not in money out of pocket to the government, but in travel expenses to go to my interview. It was a pleasant enough little trip, though. To Sweetgrass, Montana.
8, 14 -- American Express gives you a credit for the fee for global entry. So, I "paid" not in money out of pocket to the government, but in travel expenses to go to my interview. It was a pleasant enough little trip, though. To Sweetgrass, Montana.
Precheck is total extortionary bullshit. Contrary to 1 and 4, getting rid of TSA would be popular. It continues to exist only out of inertia and precheck just entrenches it further. Getting it would make my life more convenient and is definitely "worth the money" from a selfish perspective but for some reason I have picked this hill to die on and refuse to cave.
I've had the puppy 2x2 thing happen too.. fun surprise.
Look at these polls! https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/articles-reports/2022/01/14/airport-security-despite-inconvenience-most-americ
The war on moisture is popular! Even the war on shoes has majority support!
Given how much you can make selling feet pics, I'm not surprised.
I agreed to be part of a cheer-parade for incoming students for the next half hour and I hate everything. I'm hiding while writing this comment and stalling.
The high is 103 today, but it's only 93 at the moment.
"Late night in the middle of June, heat wave been freaking me out."
As far as TSA, TSA just needs to find some scammy equiment maker to come up with some "SuperScanner3000" and say it finds all the things current processes find, and use that instead of shoe removal, laptap removal, etc. SuperScann3000 is the same as the current rapyscan, but we can all pretend its great and get rid of the bullshit. Keep all the bullship jobs just stop hiring new security so eventuall the workforce dwindles down to one person pushing a big red 'scan' button for each passenger.
The British army knows a guy who sells fraudulent bomb detectors.
with some "SuperScanner3000"
But, but better than the Rape-n-scan ones?
They switched from Tejano music to my arch-nemesis journey song.
It's over! And Journey gave way to Bruno Mars, so we ended on a high note.
Aside from my existential terror, at least I'm less sweaty.
The HOV lanes in Charlotte turned into toll lanes that you can use as HOV lanes without the toll if you register. Which is no help at all if you are driving through Charlotte with three people in a car with out of state plates. So now I have evidence for my belief that Charlotte is assholes.
You can have Global Entry or Pre-check and still get put in the "slow, shoes off" line.
The last time I flew with Pre-check I was taken to a room where they dumped everything in my carryon onto a table and looked through it. They apparently didn't find any contraband so told me I could go and then looked annoyed that I took so long trying to get everything back into my bag.
Oh, they also made me take off my shoes in the room and closely examined my old worn out hiking shoes.
Yeah, the last time I flew I got SSSSed, and so couldn't use pre-check. I got lucky with the other line though so got through basically as fast as RWM got through pre-check. But as I've been saying, it was still bad because the point isn't the speed it's not having to deal with all the trays and the separate trays for electronics and the shoes and somehow getting it all back together on the other side.
The best thing in life is to be catching a Pokemon on your phone when you get to the little stand where they want to scan the boarding pass on your phone.
Between the Supreme Court and the decline of civil society, I feel like we're about to enter a golden age of TSA finding guns in the security line.
Now that covid is over again, I have a question I was afraid to ask before. My son wore nice KF-94 masks to school. But he'd just wear them once and then leave them in the car or on the couch or something. I always wore my masks until they started to look frayed or got soup on them. So, it seemed wasteful to throw away the masks my son barely used. So I started wearing his old ones after they had sat for at least 24 hours. Is that safe?
They were like $1.87 each, if that matters.
I mean, someone who pays list price would have paid that.
Covid's so fragile that I think as long as the filtration is fine, you're not harboring any of your son's old germies. As for how long the filtration is fine, I have no idea.
Also it's on topic per the OP title.