Nearly 30 (Thirty? UGH!) years ago, comedian Jeff Foxworthy released a comedy album called, “You Might Be A Redneck If…” It peaked at #38 on Billboard. The album included a segment of examples of how you might be a redneck if you do these things. Here’s a TV spot with the routine from 1989:
Of course, the same thing goes for traveling…
If you don’t travel a whole lot, you may be kind of behind the 8 ball when it comes to preparing for travel. You may not be sure of things to bring (or not bring) with you, how to find out what the weather is going to be, how to get around those pesky pre-programmed digital thermostats in hotels, etc.
Probably the most important thing is to make sure you get through the security checkpoint without a hitch. Hitches make for delays and delays put you at risk for, if not missing your flight, almost missing it, and undoubtedly some anxiousness about it. Here are some things to take into consideration:
We’ve reported in the past that lines at TSA PreCheck might be getting shorter and faster, because they were cracking down on allowing low risk people who had never gone through the PreCheck process to get PreCheck status, More recently, the regular TSA line had the potential to become a little shorter too, because more airlines were being added to TSA Pre-Check.
Unfortunately, the news for all of us, TSA PreCheck or not, just got a little worse – both lines most likely are about to slow down a little. Why?
Real I.D.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve just spent 30 minutes in the regular TSA queues, less than 5 minutes in the TSA Pre-Check line or 1 minute in the CLEAR area, all lines eventually lead to, not Rome, but the X-ray machines.
Once you’re there, it doesn’t matter if you’ve done this a bajillion times before, or even if you haven’t and know what to do to get you through X-ray quickly, you might go through the machine and get the random beeping alarm. Or maybe you got the dreaded SSSS on your boarding pass.
Either way, the TSA workers pull you aside and say you have to go through a secondary screening. It usually just involves them swabbing your hands (and/or your cell phone, laptop, food, bag, shoes, etc.), putting the swab in an Explosives Trace Detector (ETD) and, when given the all-clear, you’re told you can be on your merry way.
But why are they doing that? And why YOU?
Continue reading “Why Does The TSA Swab Your Hands, Phone, Laptop, Food, Bag, Shoes, etc.?”
If you haven’t been convinced to get TSA Pre-Check yet, chances are you’ve spent quite some time in those long queues that wind back and forth and back and forth at some of the TSA security checkpoints across the country. Granted, some of those queues are longer than others, depending on where you’re flying from. In fact, a website looked at the security wait times of the United States’ 25 busiest airports (as determined by total passengers boarding in 2018) to see which had the longest and shortest waits (and which were somewhere in between). Here’s what they found:
Continue reading “The U.S. Airports With The Longest & Shortest TSA Security Wait Times”
