Mystery Trip / Checking in and passports
 

I have arranged a mystery trip for several of my colleagues. They do not know our destination or even that we are leaving the country. I've verified with their spouses that they all have current passports and their spouses will be getting me their passports in advance so they will not know. My hope is to find a way to give them only their boarding pass to XXX-JFK and then they will find out JFK-YYY only when we arrive at the gate.

I'm wondering if security rules will allow me to go to the TA with their passports and check them in and show passports, and then give them only the XXX-JFK boarding pass and have them go through TSA with their Driver's License.

Anyone have experience of this, or is the TA going to want to see them all at the counter. I think I can convince the TA not to tell anyone the final city, but I wonder if I can find a way that my group doesn't see the TA with their passports.

Any advice?

I just realized that I could probably do the check in for them at kiosks with their passports swiped - but I've never done that for my own travel. Will that spit out a "DOCS OKAY" boarding pass, or will they still want to see them at the counter?

One issue you may encounter is if they have SkyMiles accounts, they will be getting email/app notifications in advance such as "You trip to XXX is starting soon", etc. I tried surprising my wife one time with a mystery trip, and even had her promise not to log in to her DL account. However, a week prior to departure, she got an email from DL with the destination in the subject line that ruined the surprise.

On a recent trip to Europe via a DL hub, I was able to go through TSA at RDU with only my Driver's License and the boarding pass for the RDU-BOS flight, so that part should be okay.

In my experience, whether the check-in agent wants to see everyone at the counter depends on whether you need to check bags.

When traveling with a group, I have checked in at the kiosks (including swiping everyone's passports), and the Boarding Pass said something like "INTL - Verify Passport." Then, since we had to check bags, we went to the counter and the agent/Red Coat called each one of us up, compared our face to the passport photo (IMO, this would be hard to hide), tagged/checked our bags, and sent us on our way.

I'd imagine a surprise of this caliber would be very hard to pull off.

IIRC there's some international designation printed on boarding passes for domestic connecting flights that are part of an international itinerary. I've also been asked to show my passport to the GA for such flights.

You might be able to do OLCI. However as MSP notes the first BP will note INTL connection. They must verify the passport generally before boarding of the domestic flight. No DOCS OK till agent verifies their passport. Also you can't check bags for them.

Sorry, but they're going to know when checked in at first airport.

So far I've dodged all the bullets - including the Sky Miles account. I kept their SM numbers off the reservations and in the case of one of our most frequent travelers of the group, I booked a decoy flight to SFO using miles and put his number in the system and triggered a receipt to his email. So he's been wandering around for a month thinking he knows the secret. I'll cancel his flight a week beforehand. The rest should be okay.

I'm going to try to go ahead to the kiosks and check us all in and then ask the TA if there is a way to have their passports verified without them knowing. Perhaps worst case is they'll know we're going international but not where.

I sure hope you have all the names in agreement with the pnr/passports/sm accounts otherwise you could be in for trouble

The proper way to pull this off is by chartering a private jet.

I did something like this 2 years ago. At what point do you want them to know the final destination? You can take all of the passports to the TA and check everyone in. They can stand behind you so they can be seen but holding up the passport might be a clue it isn't a domestic trip. You will probably be asked for passports at the first boarding point gate and definitely at the international departure gate - but at that point they would know they are leaving the country unless you plan on blindfolding them and covering their ears.

Not necessarily - I've done 2 TATL in the past 6 weeks ex-RDU on DL and both times for whatever reason I decided to get a paper ticket and check-in using the self-service check-in. In both instances I used my passport as the identifying piece of information (rather than my PNR).

The first time I actually went up to the GA and asked if they needed to see my passport (fully expecting they needed to do a DOC check since I hadn't interacted with any agents up to that point) and she looked confused and was said something along the lines of "no, i don't have any DOC ID checks for this flight" - I assume this is because the self check-in machine itself was able to verify my passport.

Now of course this means OP would need to check each person in at the self check-in and make sure they couldn't see the screen that displays the whole itinerary but in that scenario there shouldn't necessarily be an additional DOC check at the gate

Do all the passports have 6 months left on them at time of travel?
Do any of them require a visa to visit YYY?
Do any of them perhaps never plan to travel to YYY because they went there on college spring break and there might be a local warrant out for what they did after a night of heavy drinking?

The kiosk verifies the passports for you. Just scan them in the unit, and it will say DOCS-OK as long as:

A) you do not need VISAs
B) the return is booked along with the outbound
C) the passport length is valid for the country criteria

If all of the above is a go, then you won’t need passports again until the boarding of the intl flight.

Checking bags is a different issue all together. They will likely have to check their own bags which will reveal the destination. Most agents aren’t going to let you (or rather SHOULDN’T let you) check the bag on behalf of someone else.

I think the sentiment is good, but I wonder if this could cause problems among your colleagues. What if they don’t want to go on a long haul trip? What if they have unknown health problems or need a supply of medications you aren’t aware of. What if there are other privacy issues that the colleague hasn’t, or doesn’t want, shared with you? It almost feels like a team building exercise. Trust me, I won’t tell you anything, but trust me.

I’d probably like this myself, but my partner, if I tried it on him, would be a NO.

On a recent intl trip, we were carryon and did olci. As we got near the gate, they were paging us. They had to verify our passports at that point. I think that would be a reasonable time for them to realize something was up.