had to fly last week for work and probably will a lot more this summer. Last month I went through the process of getting the TSA Pre-Check. So glad i did after watching the 1.5-2 hour security lines at DIA and Ohare last week. So nice not having to take off my shoes, take the laptop out or take off my jacket and. to get through security in about 5 minutes. if you fly a lot, the 85 bucks for 5 years is well worth it.
If you fly internationally Global Entry is only $100 and comes with TSA Precheck.
But yes PreCheck is awesome except they keep fucking with the program. For a while it was a small number of people. Then it grew but precheck resources didn't so it became sucky. Then they grew the resources. Only to be offset shortly thereafter but the 'random inclusion' program where people would randomly be told to go to the precheck line instead of the regular line. Except they didn't know how to do precheck so they still took everything off\out which made the lines slower than regular lines (because there are usually more regular lines open)
They've stopped that for now so PreCheck is back to being a larger benefit but who knows what the future holds
On the one hand it's probably worth the $85 to avoid the theater of incompetence that is the TSA. On the other hand, everyone should be pissed off that they've taken incompetence to a level so high they can extort money out of the other passengers who don't want to spend hours in line waiting.
Would you feel just as happy if your DMV did something similar? Hey, we're going to remove the online option, creating huge lines at the DMV, but for just $100 per couple of years you can get a fast pass!".
It's a rip-off.
The reasoning isn't incompetence - its an agreement that in exchange for giving them more detailed information about yourself and having your finger prints run and stored they build a profile of you as a 'Trusted Traveler' and you get a reduced screening procedure. (You're still checked for explosives, guns etc). Its theoretically a win-win-win situation as you can have a line for less likely suspects who also tend to be high frequency airport security users who can be cycled through a line much faster but with fewer TSA employees. This lessens the staffing burden which can allow for more regular lines to be staffed while also reducing the number of people waiting in those lines. Its also theoretically self funding so those who don't use Precheck aren't subsidizing those that do.
Don't blame the agents doing their job.
Yep! Well, I mean if you consider a 95% failure rate as doing their job or lying about the need to increase taxes and fees
I mean their failure rate actually
rose after spending $540 million to 'fix the issue'
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercover-airport-screening-tests/
http://reason.org/news/show/airport-policy-security-news-111#f