CH: What about you, Rebecca?
RM: I have Clear, which I’ve found is often faster. I’ve made the appointment a few times, but I feel like it’s always at the worst time but I make it optimistically months in advance and end up canceling it. Unlike Pallavi, if my husband wants to take the kids on his own for twenty minutes, that’s cool. I’ll take the quiet time.
SM: A lot of these memberships are fraught because people are resentful of giving money to TSA for something that is still bothersome. I only first got PreCheck because I could refund it on my credit card.
PK: But you’ll always see the value in it when you get to the airport and see the monster lines—I’m sure we’ve all had moments were we dreamed of paying the extra money.
RM: I’d feel worse leaving my sister than my husband–I don’t know what that says.
PK: My sister and I always travel together and I think she knows better than to ever leave me.
RM: I see my sister less often and we do travel together—it’s exactly what you were saying, Pallavi, that it’s time to be with each other. When we are together, it’s a lot of chatting—it’s the type of thing where, if she goes to the bathroom at the airport, I’ll come and wash my hands so we can keep the conversation going. But my husband and my kids, I see them all the time. Traveling with friends or with your sister, it’s a little more celebratory and the experience is kind of a party and I can see it feeling a little weird for one member of the party to ditch out.
PK: And what do you think, Charlie?
CH: Nobody in my life really has PreCheck, I can’t say I’ve really run into this problem before and I’m here more as a moderator. But if somebody wanted to ditch me to use their PreCheck, I would encourage them to so that I could enjoy some alone time, certainly. Maybe Shannon and I just come from Irish families.
PK: You’ll have to travel with me and my sister some time!
Absent editors weigh in
“Everyone I usually travel with has PreCheck so we’ve typically all charged forward to the TSA line together. Have you noticed how people who have PreCheck seem to walk at a New York pace with their noses in the air? It’s like they are going to a VIP section—I think I do this, too. But recently I was traveling with my father, and he doesn’t have PreCheck. I ditched him so fast (with my nose in the air) that he didn’t even have time to object. I started to feel bad in the ~15 minutes that I was waiting for him on the other side of security and apologized. He sneered at me jokily and said, “It seems like you had to wait regardless.” Which is actually a really good point that I never thought of. Airplane seat upgrades? Now that’s a whole different story, and an opportunity for which I will always ditch my travel companion—without remorse.”–Scott Bay, associate editor
“This is something that I was faced with on my last vacation abroad with my husband. I had my new Global Entry, Pre-Check, and CLEAR status ready for use, and he didn’t. I ended up suffering through the queues with him on both ends of the trip, because the way I think of it, I’m amassing brownie points that I can cash in later. I’d do the same for parents and siblings; maybe not for a friend or colleague (I love you all, sorry)—I’d feel less guilty about that. Oh, here’s an idea: What if I just arrived at the airport at a different time than them? That way, we could make separate journeys through security, convene at the crappy, overpriced bar on the other end, and complain about the long lines I never had to suffer.”—Arati Menon, global digital director
