Ocn Vw 1K

JAH750, welcome to FlyerTalk!
Let me move this to the forum devoted to Trusted Traveler security screening programs. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Randyk47

I'm not TSA but no, retirees can't use the number on their ID card as their KTN. Here are the procedures: http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/news.cfm?ID=18

Dr Jabadski

Thanks for the info TSAPressSec. It’s been a bit over a year. By any chance has the situation changed for retiring military personnel? Thank you.

Randyk47

The person who posted as TSAPressSec no longer works for TSA, or the government for that matter, so he won't be posting here under that handle if at all. Anyhow, nothing has changed. The linking mechanism is the Defense Travel System (DTS) and once an active duty retires they are removed from DTS. The result is the DoD KTN goes away unless the member comes back as a DoD civilian, is reauthorized in DTS, and opts back into the program. Once I was fully retired from the Army and no longer in DTS I enrolled in GE to maintain PreCheck.

Dr Jabadski

Thank you very much. Understood re: GE (which I already have for 2 or 3 international trips each year). The best part of having an active military (DTS) Known Traveler Number is 100% TSA approval. A couple of years ago I read that most (perhaps all other) forms of PreCheck have a random, up to 30%, fail rate; one beep instead of 3 in which case one is sent to regular screening (at least it’s the front of the regular screening line in some airports). It’s very nice to hear those 3 beeps EVERY time, without fail!

Do you know how long after retirement an active military KTN would no longer result in PreCheck? From this thread it seems like it might be within 1 day of retirement date. It’s very difficult to believe that 2 gigantic government bureaucracies could be that efficient, certainly not the Navy . (Of course instead of being efficient for something which is actually helpful, like a timely processing of a retirement request or calculating the correct number of retirement points, they’re efficient at something that’s decidedly unhelpful!)

Presuming it’s appropriate, from an old sailor (to possibly an old soldier) congratulations on your retirement !

Randyk47

Not real sure how long it takes for DTS to in essence deauthorize a retired uniformed/civilian employee. I've been led to believe it's pretty quick as it involves at least some access to and use of Federal/DoD funds. Then you have the data transfer between DTS and TSA's PreCheck system and your guess is as good as mine as to the frequency of that "handshake". Could be a real time link or a 90-day batch file or whatever.

Like other DTS enrollees I was getting PreCheck 100% of the time. Thanks to a mix of government and personal travel I concurrently had advanced frequent flier status so after retirement I think I was still getting pushed forward by the airline for PreCheck. Point is that for a while it was transparent to me as I continued to get PreCheck. Eventually PreCheck started to drop off to about 80% but without being in DTS and minus my government travel my frequent flyer status dropped to a lower tier. About the same time we started traveling OCONUS on personal travel so I decided to "kill two birds with one stone" and enrolled in GE. So far PreCheck selection has been 100% and our three re-entries to the US have been a breeze.

Thank you for your service and congratulations back at you.....but....Go Army, Beat Navy!!!!

Dr Jabadski

Thanks. Yup, “so far”. GE is almost 100% but it can’t beat exactly 100%!

Thank you. BTW, I fly a Cessna based about 30 minutes flight time from West Point and I often fly over the river right past West Point (can’t fly over West Point, it’s a restricted area). The roof of the field house has very large block letters stating on one side “Beat Air Force”, the other side “Sink Navy”. I’ve always found it amusing and always point it out to passengers when doing a sightseeing flight.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...d01e112197.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...89e2576bc5.jpg

soitgoes

Actually, the link is the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC).

It's good to put your KTN/DoD ID in your DTS profile so it gets added to official travel, but the DTS link is not the TSA connection.

Homer15

I'm actually surprised to learn that DoD civilian employees get free access to pre-check when no other federal civilian employees (AFAIK) do.

Randyk47

And some DoD contractors too.

soitgoes

There are others (State, Intelligence Community, ...)
See this report:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669327.pdf

DoD Civilians are in the same database as active duty, with the same unique identifier. So a lot of adding DoD civilians was simply a simple way to expand precheck (which is not a money maker for TSA, but, rather an efficiency/effectiveness driver (in theory)).

Randyk47

Might add that the vast majority of DoD civilian employees, and in fact uniformed members, rarely fly on official business. Obviously the big benefit to them is for personal travel but again that differs from person to person so to say a lot of them take advantage of the benefit probably is a bit of a stretch. On the other hand there are some, like Mrs. K who has a split office between here in San Antonio and DC, who fly regularly. In my wife's case she actually uses her GE PassID/KTN, because of our fairly regular OCONUS travel, rather than the DoD generated KTN.

Dr Jabadski

Data point:

1 year ago: requested Navy retirement (8 yrs active, 24 reserve, Mediterranean sea duty 30 yrs ago, Afghanistan 4 yrs ago)
6 months ago: retirement approved effective 1 year ago, started receiving retired pay
2 weeks ago: turned in active ID card, received retired ID card (what can I say, I’m a procrastinator )

I’ve used my DOD ID (DTS) number as my KTN for many years. I’ve seen “TSA PRE” on 100% of my boarding passes for many years including flights 3 weeks ago. I’ve never been (randomly) declined expedited screening at the checkpoint. I’ve had Global Entry for several years but have not used it as KTN.

Flying tomorrow, boarding pass printed without “TSA PRE”. Called UA, asked rep if changing from DOD/DTS KTN to Global Entry KTN would be effective for my flight tomorrow, rep said yes. She changed the number, had me reprint the boarding pass while she was on the phone, “TSA PRE” is now on the boarding pass.

Uncertain if the trigger for lack of TSA PRE for tomorrow’s flight was random, or 1 year since retirement, or swapping ID cards. I suspect it was turning in the active ID card and getting a retired ID card.

I hope that in the future my (and your) odds of random selection for declined expedited screening continue to be 0% as it has been in the past.