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glaucon | 27 days ago

What are these checks and scrutiny and how are they applied in the time available? Given the time available is not great ("I'm on the next flight") and the amount of money is modest if humans are involved I'm intrigued to know what could be done that $45 would cover.

discuss

order

crazygringo|27 days ago

It's a database lookup that takes 5-15 minutes once you get to an available officer, but then depending on what it returns you may need additional screening, which will also need to wait for someone available.

That's why if you don't have an ID, you should get to the airport at least an hour earlier than otherwise (already accounting for long security lines), and more during peak travel times. If you get slowed down, you're going to miss your flight. They're not going to speed it up for you.

eitally|27 days ago

To me this makes no sense at all. The visual (or computational) ID check takes a second. Why is a manual entry of someone's name/DOB something that takes 5-15 minutes? This is a process control issue, not a technical problem.

scotty79|26 days ago

5 minutes for $45 bucks seems expensive. Also, they don't have to check your ID if you don't have one so less time spent on that

alecbz|27 days ago

This happened to me once, they just brought out someone (supervisor?) who asked questions about what addresses I've lived at, other similar questions I'd probably only know the answer to.

It does take longer than regular screening (most of the time was just spent waiting for the supervisor -- I'm not sure they were spending time collecting some data first), if that causes you to miss your flight you miss your flight.

It seems plausible to me that $45 could be about a TSA employee's wage times how much longer this takes. In aggregate, this (in theory) lets them hire additional staff to make sure normal screening doesn't take longer due to existing staff being tied up in extra verifications.