Originally Posted by
Da5id
I was in ORD that day also and things were not normal even for ORD. My wife and I have TSA-pre, however my boarding pass didn't have it printed (my wife's did). Tried getting it reprinted several times with United's help. No go. Regular lines were pretty long so I went to the TSA agent and showed him my known traveler number. He couldn't do anything about it but sent me to Premier which was a bit better. After I got home, I contacted TSA and United about what happened since I very nearly missed my flight and would have been separated from my wife who breezed through TSA-pre. United said it wasn't on their end. TSA pretty much said just because you paid for it doesn't mean you're going to get it and we're not going to divulge predictability algorithms to you to explain why. I don't need to know that but I would like to know how often I can expect this to happen before i renew
I think that there's a disclaimer somewhere in the TSA-Pre that sometimes you can be randomly chosen to not get that status. Now the question: did you start your trip at ORD or where you connecting from an international flight? Reason I ask is because if it was just a domestic flight, your chances of not getting TSA Pre on your boarding passes is low. It will happen from time to time randomly. So, if I were you I would still renew it. If you were connecting from an international flight, the chances of getting SSSS in your first flight and then no TSA Pre in your connecting flight are higher. Coming back from MUC in December, 10% of the passengers got randomly chosen for SSSS. My wife and I have Global Entry that usually gives us TSA Pre on domestic flights but we do get randomly chosen for the SSSS. Still, like this, we do intend to renew Global Entry.
Another question: when you asked the United check-in agent for assistance, did the agent try to un-check you and then re-check you back? Or remove your known traveler number and then input it back? Sometimes that works.