For those envious of fellow travelers who don't have to wait in snaking security lines before boarding a flight at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock: You can be one of them.
Just trot up to the third floor of the airport with proper ID in hand and enter a tidy little office, complete some paperwork that passes muster with TSA, get fingerprinted (a procedure that uses scanners, not messy ink pads), hand over $85, and congrats! Within two or three weeks, you'll receive your very own Known Traveler Number (KTN) and enter the ranks of PreCheck--low-risk travelers who enjoy expedited screening at airport security checkpoints in Little Rock and 150 other airports when traveling on participating airlines.
No more removing shoes. Forget about rummaging around in your luggage for that elusive plastic bag of toiletries. Leave the laptop in its case. Keep your jacket on and your cellphone in your purse or pocket. And the PreCheck lines are usually quite short.
Travelers who meet qualifications have been able to join PreCheck for a while now. But it hasn't been easy. The PreCheck office, run by a contractor, is in midtown Little Rock, with unfriendly hours of 8:30-11:30 a.m. and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. The airport figured out back in 2013 that it had all the facilities on its site to do the work of the midtown location itself, so it worked with TSA since then to open the same service in its existing employee badging facility--a service usually available only in much larger airports. Signing up takes about 12 minutes, not including possible wait times.
That certainly sounds better than what's been said about PreCheck recently. Remember the inspector general who found that half the flying public--some randomly pulled out of line--had been given access to PreCheck? Here's a clue: If the airports are going to pre-clear folks to fly, better if they pre-clear.
For the record, this is a win for the airport as well as for customers: Spending less time in a security line means travelers have more time to shop, dine, and enjoy themselves while spending some of that travel budget before getting airborne.
Editorial on 07/01/2015