If you’ve been putting off the inconvenient but otherwise painless process of getting PreCheck — the “trusted traveler” pre-authorization status that allows for line-jumping, jacket-wearing and laptop-stowing through airport security — you want to get that done, stat.
Why? Let us begin with the brewing travel apocalypse predicted by the New York Times:
“Wait times could reach epidemic levels when air travel peaks this summer,” a shitshow co-signed by rising numbers of (increasingly disgruntled) travelers and the TSA, which, due to budget cuts, has shed nearly 6,000 of its 48,000+ screeners. Result: wait times of up to three hours, and lines stretching to the curbside.
PreCheck — either via the $85 TSA program or the $100 Customs and Border Patrols’ Global Entry — allows you to miss most of the mess.
If you’ve lately lucked out and gotten plucked out of the non-PreCheck line for expedited processing, that benefit has come to an end, as part of the roll-up of the “Managed Inclusion II” program. The only way out of non-PreCheck purgatory is now via Managed Inclusion I, which you might qualify for after being thoroughly sniffed by bomb-detecting dogs.
If you don’t want to count on a dog to make your flight, we recommend pulling that paperwork together now.
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