Nearly three years ago, Carol and I went through the process to obtain a Global Entry Card to help us get through airport security with as little hassle as possible.

While a bit of an inconvenience to obtain, we’ve enjoyed much faster routing through immigrations when we return to the United States, and we’ve really enjoyed the privileges of the TSA PreCheck Lane.

However, lately we’ve noticed that random people have enjoyed the privileges of the TSA PreCheck Lane, and more than a few times, it seemed like an airport or two have simply rushed people through the TSA PreCheck lane as a means of crowd control.

As someone who paid, and went through the screening for the TSA PreCheck Lane, this didn’t make us feel very happy.

Homeland Security to Tighten Up TSA PreCheck Lanes and Make Them Available Only to “Trusted Travelers”

Well, if recent TSA and Homeland Security announcements can be relied upon, this is going to change and the TSA PreCheck Lane is going to only be available to those who have been pre-screened as a Trusted Traveler.  If this holds true, then you’re going to want to become one of those Trusted Travelers.

How?  The following chart will describe the various ways…

To see the live chart with links, CLICK HERE

Our Recommendations:

1. Get the Global Entry Card.  This will not only get you into the TSA PreCheck Lane, but it will also get you past the huge immigration lines when you’re coming back into the United States.
2. Once you have one of the Trusted Traveler cards, Make certain that your boarding pass says “TSA PreCheck” on it.  If it doesn’t, check your airline profile to identify yourself as a Trusted Traveler at booking, call your airline, or get a new boarding pass at the airport.  Just having one of the Trusted Travelers cards does not give you access to the TSA PreCheck Lane.  We’ve been shut out of the TSA PreCheck Lane several times until we finally got someone to tell us that it needed to be on our boarding pass, and that our cards did us no good at the airport for the TSA PreCheck Lane.
3. Some credit cards will actually reimburse you for the $100 Trusted Traveler fees.  Check the benefits of your credit card!

Well, we hope you found value in this article.  I can tell you, with as much as we travel, we sure enjoy keeping our shoes and belts on, and particularly enjoy not having to break out our computers for inspection.  TSA PreCheck is quite zippy, and we like it.  🙂
 
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