Originally Posted by
gobluetwo
The difference is that they now seem to be sending you through the body scanner, if available, rather than just giving you a hand swab. This has happened to me a handful of times. Before this year, I always just got swabbed.
The "difference" is that early last year TSA started installing AIT scanners into PreCheck lanes. The PreCheck scanners went into operation around May or June of 2014, which is when the diversions to AIT started.
The last publicly-available data, from earlier this year, is that there are 68 PreCheck-capable airports with AIT scanners installed. If you are entering one of the airports with operational scanners in PreCheck, you'll be referred to the scanner for additional screening.
As I said, this has been discussed fairly extensively on FT over the past year.