ohange

Well... I'm flying on another airline at the moment, and they have me opted in.

That makes me believe it's a WN issue rather than a TSA issue.

The whole process is not very transparent, so there's no accountability in sight here. :-(

rsteinmetz70112

TSA purposely avoids transparency so they can trap terrorists and more importantly justify their existence by random acts of incompetence.

ursine1

Pre Check was pretty much a cluster at MDW this morning. My experience: (note: I do not have Pre Check.)

1st stop: Outside the security lanes, show boarding pass to TSA agent. No idea why.

2nd stop: 15 feet later. Agent with mounted tablet/scanner. Didn't actually scan BP, but was just tapping the screen. Device says "TSA Randomizer," sends me to the right (Pre Check / Fly by lanes.)

3rd stop: 10 feet later. Hand scan. Palms swabbed, swab inserted in machine. Pass, continue on.

4th stop: Regular BP and ID check. BP is scanned.

Sent thru to the very far right lane. All the way around corner discover lines 2-3x as long as regular ones. Very slow moving, much confusion. Agent working the lines (3 open of possible 4, no initial delineation between each) tells us this is our lucky day because we don't have to take our shoes off. We get to "try out" TSA Pre Check.

Took ~20 minutes to clear from that point. Upside: shoes on, laptop stayed in bag, WTMD instead of nude-o-scope; only CPAP needed to be removed. Downside: probably took just as long as regular lanes.

If this was an enticement to purchase Pre Check, it wasn't a very good one.

If I already had Pre Check I'd not be pleased with the wait.

If I had Fly By access I'd definitely not be happy.

ohange

I think I heard somewhere that the TSA are trying some more sensible approaches to security... the "tsa randomizer" is probably anything but random - - if you didn't look like a bad guy, they probably sent 1 out of every x-many down that lane... the residue sensor being one check that they could do to let you keep shoes/laptop intact. Honestly, were it not for the volume seen today, this probably isn't bad, if they can go to this method more regularly.

lougord99

TSA at MKE yesterday were more confused than the passengers. For some reason I had TSA-Pre on my boarding pass. First stop was that the device that tells passengers to go left or right. Got to the place where I show ID and the agent says you have pre, why are you in this line and sends me over to the other ( because that is where I was told to go ) Now the other line had 2 lines - those that had been told to go there by the machine pointing left or right and those that had been sent left but had Pre on boarding pass. TSA agents start arguing with each other as to who in those 2 lines should be next. Luckily it was not crowded or it would have been chaos.

paule123

That was pretty much my mother's experience at MDW yesterday. I was surprised when I checked in for her online and saw "TSA PRE" on her boarding pass. So I explained to her the deal on how PreCheck works and was hoping she would have a good experience to report back. Unfortunately she reported the lines were long and there were many people in line who had no idea what to do, and were slowing the whole thing down.

Data points:
- my mother flies 1 or 2 times a year
- she did not opt-in to anything (nor did I on the SWA site)
- ticket was purchased with points in my RR account, fees paid with my SWA credit card, EB purchased for the R/T
- Wanna Get Away fare on this segment, Anytime on the return
- I fly SWA maybe 1 or 2 times a year (I am not A-list)
- I am Global Entry and get Pre 100% of the time (flying UA as a Silver elite)

I am wondering if she somehow inherited my GE/TT status because I made the booking? SWA is giving preference to SWA CC holders? SWA is being nice to seniors? Some combination of the above?

ryanmcv

I was also surprised to see "TSA PRE" on my mother's boarding pass when I checked her in this morning. She is flying MDW-PHX first thing tomorrow morning. I also booked her flight with my own account/points, but I am not A-List or A-List Preferred. I do fly SWA at least 6-10 times per year, however. I also have a SWA Visa. I'm really not sure how they are doling out the pre-check designations.

Anyways, should I tell my mother to just use the regular security lanes at MDW instead? It sounds like the pre-check lane is not worth the headache.

expert7700

at PIT we were escorted back out after clearing the ID+boarding pass check

TSA "lead officer": I just noticed on your phone that your barcode is not valid
me: really? it seemed to work
TSA: yours is different. see the guy's behind you. it needs to be square
me: there are different barcode formats from different airlines.
TSA: yours didn't read
me: I watched ours display our secure flight data, names, and beeped 3x. should er scan them again?
TSA: our machines don't read southwest barcodes
me: pointing to our data that was still on his scanner display..... (facepalm)

On my request they brought over a TSA "supervisor", followed by a real TSA supervisor followed by the airport manager (non TSA). the airport manager huddled with the TSA for a few minutes as he clearly had no idea why there was a problem. He escorted us upstairs, apologizing the whole time. we got paper boarding passes and went through the same lane and the same barcodes on paper scanned. the funny thing was the barcode was smaller and the machine was having a hard time scanning. I almost offered him my phone again but though that would be pushing my luck.

The airport manager told me that scanner was the only one that had been upgraded to read all the barcode types and said it was s TSA training issue.

chuckworth

Pre Check at MDW this morning was the same as previously reported above. Long line and slower than the old FlyBy lane. I went FlyBy and cleared in less than 5 minutes. Mrs. Chuckworth went Pre and it took her 25 minutes to clear. Hopefully this gets smoother over time as MDW works out the kinks. For now, I'm sticking with the old FlyBy lane.

ursine1

I'm confused. When I was there, the Pre Check lane and the Fly By lane were the same thing. (Very far right.) What lane did you use?

rsteinmetz70112

How old are the mothers?

I have previously speculated that TSA is shunting people 75+ into the pre-check lines.

They may also be doing other screening with the Secure Flight data.

billk60

My home airport is luv. I received the pre-check invite too. It said about a month to process

nsx

One man's random acts of incompetence are another man's random acts of competence.

CDKing

Opt-in process is working as designed. Its solely based on your history with the single airline. It doesn't make sense but when does anything the TSA does. I'm surprised WN got the opt-ins as the word is TSA is doing away with that way of getting Pre-check. Latest example is Jetblue which is Trusted traveler number only. Hawaiian is another example of no opt-in

1) TSA Checking Databases long before people fly: NYT

2) You will start to see this sign at more and more airports

GVretiredguy

As noted in my prior post #464-466 we were going TUS-PDX. My wife was PRE, I was not. tusphotog hit the nail on the head when he said that the only benefit at TUS was that she would not have to take off her shoes.
I printed out the return B/P and we were both PRE going PDX-TUS. It was yesterday (Friday PM) and the airport was not that busy. Entered the PRE line and walked up to the TSA agent. He checked B/P's and we moved on. There were 2 separate line and 2 scanners for all your carry-on stuff and it merged into 1 walk thru scanner. They had a TSA agent walking in the middle of the 2 lines telling everyone exactly what they had to take-off (heavy coat for 1 person) shoes (contained metal arch supports for another person). We went thru in less than 5 minutes start-to-finish. It was really very convenient because you didn't have to worry if you forgot something in the tray or if something fell out. We are still up in the air if we want to spend $85 each. We fly 6-8 times a year and are not sure if it is worth it.

GVretiredguy