What exactly "earns" someone the SSSS? It looks like common last names, one-ways, overnights, right?

I ask because I got my first one (that I remember) early this year. I was told that I was "randomly selected by the computer", but the funny thing was that the UA system was down and my boarding pass had to be hand-written. The fact that it was hand-written probably did it, but I find it odd that the agent still tried to blame the computer.

its usually either One way tickets or tickets bought at the last moment.
And may be some common names (but if that was the case you would have
been flagged before)

fortunately I've only been flagged once. that was for
One way ticket, 2 hours before the flight and my assistant booked
it without using my FF#.

if I buy it using my online account and FF# (with elite status on it)
i've never been flagged .. even for the last minute one ways.

(i've done this on delta, CO, NW, WN, KL)

mostly likely you were flagged in the computer so the
Agent marked it.

i've flown on hand written boarding passes about 4-5 times
last year.. and never had any issue.

That's the funny thing. The computers were completely down. The agents had to call out to get updated arrival/departure times and manually move them around on a board. When we showed up, they copied our ticket info down onto sheets of paper. There was literally no computer system to flag me.

The funny thing is, I got back to work a few days later and everybody complained about UA being down and what a nightmare it was....

How did they verify that you were an actual passenger?

I guess the agent was having a bad day hand writing the boarding passes...
and decided to pass on the frustration to the passengers.. sorry about that.

If you take all metal off of you and into the bag.. the extra screening should
take less than a minute... I wouldnt be too worried about
it.. but it would certainly bother me a little.

IME, IrrOps (e.g. rebooking for a canceled flight) is pretty much a guarantee of SSSS. Obviously, that's not a factor if you don't have to leave the airport, but if you're put on a next-day flight, you can expect to win the SSSS sweepstakes.

There will be, I suppose, a very good reason for flagging those travelling on one-way tickets as SSSS.....what is it? I ask as someone who is travelling on a one-way ticket in a few weeks (coming to the US to work, so no need for a return) and who was not allowed to use an e-ticket but was forced into nasty paper tickets, meaning queues to check-in and almost certainly a 'random' SSSS....which will be the second in successive visits to the USA!

Good question about verifying I was a passenger. Come to think of it, I had nothing but my confirmation with e-ticket and record locator. Maybe they were anticipating the computers being back up? Not sure.

As for the search itself, it wasn't a problem at all. I'd just heard about it but not had it happen to me. And when the agent wrote "SSSS" on my hand-written boarding pass after telling me the computer was down, but still said the computer randomly selected me, I knew something was up.

Reasons include SSI, and you cannot know why you are picked out to be a public example. Letters got me several phone calls back from various entities affiliated with the TSA's Dark Kingdom. Letters to whom? All congressmen, first, the airline(a joke---like complaining to your home invader that your hands are tied too tight), the TSA location AT the airport, the office of the GSC there, the TSA office of Civil Rights, the BBB and the visitor's bureau or Chamber of Commerce for the area.

I still can't tell you why I was bullied twice in a row, but I also bet they know my name. The 'apologies' you may or may not receive will be, as were mine, inappropriate for the treatment and unacceptable, as though that made a difference. Since you cannot know WHY you were SSSS'd, they are unaccountable and damned smug about it.

Letters seem to make the barsdturds uneasy, though.

It can be a random thing. after flying over 250 segments on AA since SSSS was initiated, I got a SSSS BP. And judging from my previous random SSSS from AS, I surmise that the SSSS applies to both ends of a round trip. This is patently stupid, as is the printing of SSSS on the BP anyway. I did extract a small sense of personal revenge (we get off on the small things) by pointing out that SSSS implies that normal security is not adequate. And apparently I was polite enough about it that I did not get too much extra retaliation.

The airports involved were SJC and BOS. The procedures were quite different, with SJC taking forever, and conducted by the village idiot.

As others have stated, the other reasons for SSSS are airline rules such as one-way tickets (seems to be less than it used to be), and the most idiotic of all - re-booking for a cancellation.

The times I have done the same-day confirmed change on DL and NW I have been SSSSd. Once I was re-routed from a NW cancellation onto a UA and SSSSd. I've gotten used to it and it kind of throws off the TSA guys when you know what to lift/turn and when.

SSSS primarily seems to be triggered on the following:
- last-minute one-way tickets
- roundtrip tickets with the outbound segment on one airline and the return on another (even codeshares such as US/UA)
- tickets bought in a foreign country
- about 10% of other tickets (random)

Also my experience has been that if you ask for a First Class upgrade on the day of travel you are almost guaranteed to get SSSS.

If the weather was bad and I expected to sit on the ground for hours, I would try for it. Now I ask at the ticket counter when checking in and no SSSS!

I've seen mentioned that changing you flight at the "last minute" can trigger SSSS, but what exactly is last minute? My husband and I have a trip to Europe coming up in 2 1/2 weeks, and decided this morning that we'd like to leave a day early. I know there are no guarantees, but if that is a likely trigger, I'd probably rather keep things as they are.

I doubt you'll have a problem 2 weeks out. I believe a change that far in advance would be essentially the same as purchasing a ticket at that point, which would generally be a pretty low risk.

IME, SSSS really isn't that bad most of the time. It takes an extra 5-10 minutes, but for me, it hasn't been enough of a problem to make me want change my travel plans (or, as in this case, not change my travel plans) because of it.

Oooooh, hockeyguy. Scary. Public frisking isn't "too bad" for you. Wonder if handcuffing innocents will ever be tolerable standard operating procedure in our country, too. SSSScary as hell.