Let me get this said outfront – line or no line, I’d rather have PreCheck than not. While I’m capable of griping on occasion, such as about my recent early Monday morning in Atlanta experience, the idea of avoiding shoe carnival, not removing my 3-1-1 bag and my excessive amount of electronics will always trump the routine screening process for me. Wearing an insulin pump is the final straw as my presence in the nekked scanner voids the warranty on the pump according to its manufacturer. In other words, no PreCheck = guaranteed patdown for me.
Since I whined a little last week, I think it’s only fair that I blog about the flip side of the coin – the absolutely positive experience I had with TSA PreCheck in Orlando last week. For sure, Thursday at noon may not be MCO’s peak departure hour, but the security queues were well subscribed anyway. Nonetheless, I walked up to the PreCheck lane and was immediately met by a courteous TSA employee who scanned my boarding pass and checked my ID. Then, I made my way through the queue to the walk through metal detector. I was ready, but the newbie in front of me was not. Nonetheless, the TSA folks were on top of it, firmly but politely letting the person in front of me know what and what not to do. With a minimum of fuss, the newbie made it though and so did I.
All told, I was in and out of screening in about 3 minutes. I’ll take that, and I’ll take PreCheck any day over anything else.
-MJ, May 21, 2014
Flying out of Kansas City is never a huge ordeal, often having pre-check lines of 45-90 seconds, maybe even 5 minutes(!). However, last week, I was flying with a colleague out of Oakland. Lines were everywhere, and it was horrible! Even though lines extended beyond the roped off areas, I was through in 12 minutes, while my colleague made it through about 20 minutes after me, just in time for him to board. Oh, and he was still carrying his belt, and shoes were untied.
PreCheck FTW
You are correct. You were not there during any type of volume. MCO is a disaster and has been every time I’ve been there since they opened up the flood gates on pre-check to people with no status, no history and not actually pre-checked…
MCO has removed the Delta premium passenger benefit. After you get your ID checked, you get in line with EVERYONE else!!!
My last trip at MCO was 11 days ago and it took me almost 20 minutes via pre-check. The amount of babies and people without US passports was maddening.
Can someone tell me why should anyone pay $100 or $200 for access to expedited screening, when you get lumped in with people who get it for free???
#Idiotic
@Dr J, I’ve definitely seen it worse than it was during my last visit. Though PreCheck still beat the regular queue during a recent Saturday exit with my fellow thousands of cruisers and Disney escapees.
I agree. In spite of it all, I’d rather have PreCheck and know I’ll pass security in less than ten minutes, give or take a line ahead of me. I can appreciate TSA plucking a few passengers from the main line into PreCheck, but they need to do a better job of informing said passengers that they don’t have to remove shoes, belts, etc.