Just to add a data point, applied for my renewal and was approved the next day. No interview.

Was a very pleasantly surprising easy process.

Does your Known Traveler Number stay the same upon renewal? I just renewed mine today 364 days before it expires!

Yes.

Great! I did mine 364 days before it expires. I figure with the Grace Period I have nothing to loose. $100 is totally worth the cost for TSA Pre Check and GE. I would never fathom not having such a program. I don't enjoy standing in Long lines and I like the Facial recognition system!

+1

Just remember to pull your mask down before using the kiosk. I got the dreaded "X" recently as I forgot.

Got conditionally approved for my second renewal. I did have a lot of international travel, but the only place I can think that would *maybe* cause an issue was a trip to Myanmar a few years ago.

I find it a tad funny that I wasn’t automatically approved since I went through a pretty exhaustive background check for a government contractor last year.

Darn it! Husband and I have our first international flight scheduled since 2019 for mid-September. It just occurred to me to look up our GE expiration date and discovered mine expired in June, his in May. I'm surprised we never received emails prior to expiration about this.

What are our options now? I'll go to the website and see what happens, but just wondering people's experience with re-instating a recently expired GE. We had about 10 or 12 TATL flights during 2018-2019, then after our last flight in Dec 2019, have not traveled due to the pandemic. Really hoping we can sort this before our trip in six weeks.

I renewed online and did need an interview which could be scheduled as soon as the next day in anchorage, alaska. During the interview, the officer remarked about my travel to 22 countries in the past 5 years. Wonder if that’s why I had to interview??

Well I'm super impressed. After I posted this two days ago, I managed to log into the new login.gov system and request a renewal of our expired GE. I had the emails in my inbox this morning saying that our status had changed, logged in, and we've both been approved. I submitted the applications late Thursday and the emails were sent at 3:40 am Saturday morning.

Question: Do I need to click the "replace card" link to have a new card sent or will one be sent automatically?

A new card will be automatically sent to you. You shall received it in 7-10 days. Make sure to activate it as soon as you receive it.

Whether an interview is required seems to be a random thing. I reported visiting m:ore countries than that and did not require an interview for my most recent renewal.

Some older relatives — retirement-age doctors — got a conditional approval requiring an interview with a remote interview option. The only thing that has changed with their circumstances — beside being older — is that they reported visiting a new country/continent for them by adding Morocco to the list of countries visited. Names and ethnicities may be a factor, depending on who is involved in reviewing the particular renewal applications, in whether an “interview” is required for a renewal applicant.

I declared my visits to Morocco and a few nations that are definitely not on the "friendly nation" list. N:eek: interview this time. From what I've seen and heard there is no easily discernible pattern. I guess that's the way CBP wants it.

I think you're absolutely right. I've also heard there is a random factor; ie. some people are randomly selected for interviews even if there are no red flags.

What's also curious is that there's extreme variability on how long conditional approvals take as well, similarly without any apparent pattern. Mine is in its seventh month, even though my only new countries were Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Guatemala.

Both DW and I has Russia on our list (cruise ship visit) on our last GE renewal and no interview was needed. A couple of years later, we applied for NEXUS. That does require an in-person interview. U.S. CBP asked no questions about where we had been but the Canadian CBSA rep. did ask about Russia. When we said cruise ship, that was all he needed to hear.