Originally Posted by
chollie
This raises an interesting point (perhaps outside your paygrade).
You are correct that GE/NEXUS/SENTRI cards are for international land crossings only.
GE membership + passport is valid for international air crossings.
GE/NEXUS/SENTRI KTNs, when entered in the air reservation, do provide access to Pre.
Since the KTN, when entered in the air reservation, is sufficient for access to the Pre lane, why would the actual card displayed to the TDC not be?
A few points on this, and I have been asked this question many times from reporters and other travelers. First, if you are disqualified from a CBP program, you may still have possession of that card. We don't have readers at the TDC to electronically read these cards.
The other main reason is we vet passengers on a per-flight basis. As I have told reporters before, if we deem a threat on a certain flight and/or route, we would have the ability to scale back the number of TSA Precheck passengers. Since vetting occurs for each flight via our Secure Flight system, we have more flexibility on whether we provide TSA Precheck or not.
While cards are provided for CBP trusted travelers, we don't provide them for the TSA Precheck Application Program.