TSA Precheck issue at MCO

[bumbershoot]

the TSA agent wouldn't allow me to go through precheck because it wasn't printed on my boarding pass

He was 100% correct. It has to be on your boarding pass.

The agent before was wrong, though. If you’d had it the kids could have gotten through with you even if it wasn’t on their passes.

The thing that bothers me most is that we had just paid for TSA precheck for the convenience and on our 2nd flight it seems that I was randomly chosen to be excluded

Nah. You somehow didn’t have it linked enough.

SW is a pain with pre. I ended up calling last time. My brother had booked the flights and then checked me in without telling me. So he wasn’t in my account and couldn’t make sure the ktn was entered during the process.

From experience I know that sometimes you have to manually enter it during online checkin. United did this to my now-ex a lot. When he checked in for himself he’d just decide it was random. When I did his checkin I would go back through checkin and manually enter it, and voila, pre would be on his boarding pass.

I ended up calling SW and she entered it, I went back through the online process, and there it was.

Was your plane ticket booked prior to receiving PreCheck? If that's the case, then you have to either manually add your TSA PreCheck number to each existing reservation OR call the airline and see if they will do it for you.

Totally not my experience FYI. I had long-booked flights, got my ktn through NEXUS (the best program for pre if you are near an interview facility), put it into my account, and at checkin it automatically pulled the number. This was either delta or Alaska, not SW, so if you’re being specific to SW I can’t speak to that, but for airlines in general it’s not hard and fast.



OP the takeaway is to do online checkin and make sure you have precheck on your boarding pass. If you don’t, redo it or call at that time.

 

[disneyseniors]

I have it and there is nothing random about it not showing up on boarding passes. It's very reliable as long as you input your TSA number into the reservations system when booking the flight. Problems crop up when people forget to do that, or sometimes when there are codeshare flights. But for normal flights with a single airline that you gave for TSA number to, you'll reliably get PreCheck.

I don't know for sure, Shanti. We didn't buy it. We got pre check apparently because we are of a certain age. We were told that when you reach a certain age you get precheck for free. We have been randomly denied precheck, and when questioning security, they told us that even if we have pre check, they do make you go through regular security occasionally. That's the way it was explained to us.
I don't know if it is different if you pay for it?

 

[Ralph&Pam]

I don't know for sure, Shanti. We didn't buy it. We got pre check apparently because we are of a certain age. We were told that when you reach a certain age you get precheck for free. We have been randomly denied precheck, and when questioning security, they told us that even if we have pre check, they do make you go through regular security occasionally. That's the way it was explained to us.
I don't know if it is different if you pay for it?

The precheck for seniors of a certain age is quite airline dependent and can be hit or miss. Your experience as senior citizens may not be universal. Before DW and I got Global Entry (which gives us pre-check) we had situations where only one of us, both of us, or neither of us got pre-check on our boarding passes and we’re well into the senior category. Since we added GE, we have both had pre-check for all domestic flights and all international flights on US-flagged carriers.

 

[Jimsig]

The reason behind buying it for me is to have shorter security lines, not have to removes shoes, jackets, etc, or pull liquids or electronics out of your bag, and to go through a metal detector not the body scanner. We have Global Entry to get through customs faster, and have never not gotten the precheck on the boarding pass. Like someone above posted, it seems it can be added at the counter if not present.

Yes it can or at least with JetBlue. Last Oct we did a big family trip to DW and each family booked there own airline tickets. My brother's KTN was entered incorrectly when they made the reservation. I told them to check in 24 hours in advance but they waited to check in on the JetBlue app while we were on our way to the airport. They realized that he didn't have pre-check on his boarding and because of that neither did 2 of his three kids. His wife was on a separate res with another child as they paid for those tickets using points. When they finally realized his KTN was incorrect JB let them use a computer to look up his KTN and they added it to his reservation and reprinted the boarding passes and pre-check was on it.

 

[Huff]

I'm the opposite. I have not paid for pre-check but 8 out of 10 flights I have had it printed on my boarding pass. Wife often does as well but doesn't fly as much.

 

[rlduvall]

I have precheck and my 19 year old son always has it on his boarding pass if I purchased our tickets together. I've had precheck for almost 2 years; so beginning when he was 17. I usually fly SW or AA, but even found this to be true with Frontier Airlines - which really surprised me. I find precheck absolutely priceless at MCO.

 

[Jimsig]

I have precheck and my 19 year old son always has it on his boarding pass if I purchased our tickets together. I've had precheck for almost 2 years; so beginning when he was 17. I usually fly SW or AA, but even found this to be true with Frontier Airlines - which really surprised me. I find precheck absolutely priceless at MCO.

I have seen a lot of people post here on the DIS that everyone in there party (meaning adults) got pre-check even though only one had paid and others who have said only one person got it. Seems that more get it then don't.

 

[n2mm]

I fly jetblue and always book everyone on my itinerary. Rarely does everyone get tsa precheck unless they have a KTN. In our family all of us have a KTN to include my 13 year old granddaughter. In June my grandson and his GF were traveling with us and didn’t get precheck. When my grandkids travel with us they never get it on their tickets, but do go through the precheck line with us. When we flew SW last year with them, they also didn’t get precheck like us. So when my granddaughter turned 13 this year, we signed her up for precheck. So for us, our non precheck travelers almost never get it. We’ve had precheck for several years and it was worth the money. Before we got it, I got it for free about 99% of time, probably because of my USG background but my husband seldom got it for free.