canyonwalker | Entries tagged with tsa

Panama Travelog #1
SJC Airport - Sat, 21 Dec 2024. 10pm.

We're leaving for Panama this evening. In a sense we've left already. We've left home. Though we're only ~10 miles away from home so far, at the airport in San Jose.

We arrived early at the airport this evening, just before 8pm for a flight that doesn't leave until 10:55. We allowed extra time to deal with passport checks (required before getting a boarding pass to Panama) and we wanted to make sure SJC didn't close up the TSA PreCheck line at 8pm or somesuch.

Well, they had kinda closed the PreCheck line by 8pm. We were shunted into one line with all passengers. We got pass cards that allowed us to walk through magnetometers with our shoes on instead of removing shoes and raising our arms in a surrender sign in the millimeter wave scanner. But bag scanner line was slow because of all the non-PreCheck customers having to strip things off and empty their pockets. If nothing else it was an interesting reminder of why PreCheck is worth it. I just wish it wasn't an aggravatingly slow reminder.

Once we got into the concourse I was happy we'd chosen to eat dinner at home. Most of the eateries in SJC Terminal A are walled off and undergoing reservation.

We've been sitting in the gate area, mostly bored, now for almost two hours. Hooray for laptops, handheld devices, and ubiquitous wifi/cell service otherwise this wait would be intolerable. By 2024 standards it'd be intolerable. Well, at least our aircraft is here already and it looks like we'll be able to board & leave on time.

Australia Travelog #2
SYD Airport - Sun, 24 Dec 2023, 7am

We've arrived in Australia! We're still at Sydney airport, and I'm just jotting down a few things.

1. The flight was long. It was scheduled at 15 hours 20 minutes. We left a bit late and arrived a bit early, so our actual flight time was about 14.5 hours.

2. Hawk and I had the good luck of an empty middle seat between us. With that plus the few inches of extra legroom in United's Economy Plus it was almost comfortable. Almost. The seat bottoms were too short (an issue for taller people like me) so it didn't distribute pressure evenly across my legs, and the seat didn't tilt far enough back to be able to fall asleep easily. I did get some sleep but only a few hours.

3. I used my new iPad to good avail on the trip. The aircraft had seat-back entertainment screens, but the audio quality through the supplied headphones was awful. It sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher but whispering. I switched to my iPad and watched two movies. After that I slept for a few hours (I think it was a few hours but it could have been 12 minutes). For the last hour or so before landing I played sudoku. To answer my question from yesterday about whether a 3rd device is worth it, the answer so far is still, "Yes, but only in specific situations so far."

4. People on the plane were mostly well behaved. One kid a few rows over was clearly very ill, having coughing fits for hours at a time when he wasn't asleep. I was glad I wore my mask. Hawk and I were pretty much the only passengers wearing masks, though. Even the wiper behind us wasn't wearing a mask. ..."Wiper" is my nickname for germaphobes who vigorously wipe down their entire seat area with alcohol swaps when they sit. You can smell them even if you don't see them. Suddenly the whole area smells like rubbing alcohol or Pine-Sol. There have always been wipers on planes and trains, even before Coronavirus became a thing, but now their behavior seems flatly ridiculous as these germ-obsessed people never wear masks. I wonder if they adorn their cars with "Baby On Board" stickers while not wearing seatbelts.

5. Passport control and customs at Sydney Airport were swift. TSA in the US could really take a lesson here. Passport control was faster in Australia as a foreigner than in the US as a US citizen with Global Entry.

Grand Cayman Travelog #28
IAH airport - Sat, 20 May 2023, 3pm

We're halfway home from Grand Cayman, making a connection in Houston. We had to clear passport checks for the first time in 4 years. (Covid dealt a last blow to our overseas travel plans.)

Like the last time we entered the US at an airport— which coincidentally was this same airport, IAH— there's a big banner overhead, "Global Entry: No Paperwork, No Lines". Last time that was a total lie. We literally had to wait in a line, a long line, to hand in paperwork.

Returning from overseas. Global Entry slogan is a lie. (May 2023)

Returning from overseas. Global Entry slogan is a lie. (May 2023)

This time the big banner (it's still there!) was only half a lie. There's no more paperwork; they've got it computerized. But there's still a long line. After you file your ~~paperwork~~ electronic records at a computerized kiosk you have to queue up in a long single line with everyone else for your ~~paperwork~~— excuse me, electronic records— to be checked by a CBP officer. There were only 3 CBP officers for 100+ passengers. And that was just the Global Entry queue.

After clearing passport control we had to go through TSA security screening again. Yeah, that's the way it works in the US. CBP discharges you to "outside" the secure zone, and you basically have to reenter the airport. And the entry they shunted us to had no TSA PreCheck. What an eye opener it was seeing how the other half lives. Regular TSA screening sucks more now than it did several years ago. It seems they've learned how to make the process even more dehumanizing. Many people contend that the government makes non-PreCheck screening worse on purpose to encourage more people to volunteer their data to the government— and pay a fee— to be treated less dehumanizingly.

I had my interview for renewing Global Entry yesterday. After all the frustration with the process the past few weeks— seeing basically nothing available for weeks, then by chance finding an online interview the next day— the actual interview was so basic it was ridiculous. The interviewer asked me a bunch of simple questions that I already answered in my application: what's my address, what countries have I traveled to in the past 5 years, have I ever been convicted of a crime. It was complete in 5 minutes, and my renewal fully approved.

What a farce. Asking me these questions a second time, this time on a Zoom video chat, does nothing to validate the answers. The pointlessness of this interview just underscores what a farce this whole stupid process is. They should have just renewed me without putting me through the rigamarole of scheduling an interview they're woefully understaffed to provide.

Oh, and the interviewer arrived almost 15 minutes late. That was penultimate frustration in the process, as the government policy around missing an interview is that it's basically your fault— and the punishment is having to start the process over from scratch. ...Not just starting the renewal from scratch, but having to reapply to the whole program as you've never had GE before.

Well, at least it's done now for the next 5 years. And the interview could've been worse.... I could've had to fly 1,000 miles away for it!

Twoe weeks ago Hawk and I applied to renew our Global Entry credentials. They expire in December and January. The government quickly approved us conditionally— meaning our credentials were provisionally extended for several more months. We'd need to complete interviews to renew fully for another 5 year term. That sounds like a sensible process, right? The problem was interviews are almost completely unavailable for the next 12 months.

"I'll check back periodically," I promised myself. I know that often the way government schedules work is that appointments are made available in small blocks on some regular schedule, like once a week or once a month. I checked two weeks ago Monday... nothing. I checked last week Monday, too; also nothing. I checked on a few other days of the week, as well, since Monday is not always the key.

I checked again today... I hit pay-dirt! I found about two dozen virtual appointments open Tue-Wed-Thu this week. (And nothing for the rest of the year. They might only load appointments a week at a time.) I booked one for myself tomorrow midafternoon and called Hawk at work to let her know. Now she's got one for Wednesday after work.

I'm glad we'll get these taken care of early and via Zoom rather than having to keep checking back for in-person appointments all over the country, or worrying about what the lines might be like for doing "Enrollment on Arrival" the first time we return from a foreign trip. We don't even have a foreign trip planned at the moment. It's nice to clear this bureaucratic hurdle separately from all the other complexity of traveling overseas.

Last Friday our renewed passports arrived— by Priority Mail, no less. It only took 4 weeks including mailing both ways. That weekend we used our new passport numbers (yes, the government changes your number every time you renew 🙄) to apply for renewing our Global Entry memberships.

Global Entry is important because it includes TSA PreCheck, which speeds us through security checks at airports. That saves me 10, 15, even 20+ minutes each time I enter an airport. I fly often enough to make it well worth it. On top of that Global Entry adds simpler processing through border control when returning to the US from overseas. I don't travel internationally as much as I used to 10-15 years ago, when I flew overseas almost once a month, but the cost premium is small so I figured it's worth it, too.

There was good news/bad news on Global Entry. The good news was that DHS responded to our applications quickly. By Monday, next business day, we had conditional approval. Conditional approval means that an interview is required to complete full approval. And that's where the bad news comes in: Global Entry interview appointments are ridiculously unavailable.

First, there's the option for a Zoom interview. I checked the schedule.... None available for the next 52+ weeks!

Next I checked in-person interviews at SFO airport, a 40 minute drive away. Also none available for 52+ weeks. I mention 52 weeks because this has to be completed within a year of applying or the whole application is lost and must be restarted from scratch.

This is even more of a farce than when we originally enrolled in Global Entry 5 years ago. Back then I could at least schedule an interview at SFO 7 months out.

What about flying to another airport for an interview? Yes, we did that 5 years ago! We flew to Albuquerque, 1,000 miles away, for our interviews. I started with airports that are easy (less expensive/lots of direct flights) to get to:

Los Angeles: no availability for 52+ weeks
Las Vegas: no availability for 52+ weeks
Portland, OR: no availability for 52+ weeks
Phoenix: no availability for 52+ weeks
Seattle: no availability for 52+ weeks

Are you sensing a pattern here? 😡

My new passport arrived in the mail today. My last one, quite well used (I had traveled overseas extensively years ago) expired in 2020. With the Coronavirus pandemic and all I let it lapse and then procrastinated renewing it. Finally I drew a line in the sand last month and pushed myself to submit the application for renewal.

Getting my new passport less than 4 weeks later, including time mailing the old one in and getting the new one mailed back, seems fast. But that's because I paid $60 extra for expedited service. Regular passport service comes with a disclaimer like, "We'll try to get it in 6 months. Maybe. We're really busy." So I paid more not to wait in limbo. Gotta love the government.

Where will I go first with my renewed passport? I don't know. I don't have any specific travel plans right now. I rushed the renewal mostly because I wanted to have a valid passport to renew my Global Entry pass,which expires at the end of this year. Global Entry is valuable even without travel abroad because it includes TSA PreCheck— which I enjoy the benefits of on every trip that involves flying from a US airport. That's been 20 one-way trips in the past 7 months, with at least 6 more in the next 2 months. I definitely don't want to let that lapse next year... and again the government's already like, "Processing time could be 6 months or longer due to high demand." 🙄

Pacific Northwest September Travelog #17
PDX Airport - Mon, 5 Sep 2022, 6pm

We wrapped up the last our our three-day weekend in southern Washington today after hiking Panther Falls and hiking a few falls at Beach Rock State Park. (Update: links added.) Around 2:30 we grabbed a late lunch at a drive-in burger stand in the 'burb of Washougal, WA and then drove to PDX to begin the airport shuffle.

The security shuffle (part of the airport shuffle) took longer than usual today. It looked like the TSA only had one luggage scanner open initially that was being shared by both Pre-Check and non-Pre passengers. The queue only crawled forward. At some point more scanner crews arrived and the line started moving much faster. I timed my time in line: 21 minutes. That's the worst I've ever measured in years of having Pre-Check.

Aside from the frustration of standing in line so long there was no harm done by the slow TSA. We walked down the hall to our gate at 4:45, two hours before our scheduled 6:45 departure. While Hawk headed straight toward the gate area I made a pit stop at the bar, where I made friends with two pints of beer for the next 60+ minutes. Heels up before wheels up!

Now it's just after 6pm, and I'm with Hawk at the gate. Our aircraft is at the gate, too, and the inbound passengers have disembarked. Things look good for an on-time departure. ...Of course, that's exactly how things looked at the start of this trip, right before we were dealt a 90+ minute delay! Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

Pacific Northwest August Travelog #4
SEA Airport - Sun, 7 Aug 2022, 7:30pm

It's been another day, another busy day, of vacation on our three-day weekend trip to the Pacific Northwest. But busy in a good way! We hiked a bunch more waterfalls in Mt. Rainier National Park.

We started the day in Puyallup. We got up at 7am, the earliest of this trip. We showered, dressed, packed, and checked out, rolling in the car by 8am. We grabbed a quickie breakfast at 7-Eleven again (yay, Big Gulp and roller taquitos!) as we drove the 90 minutes or so out to the park. There was already a pretty long line of cars at the entrance station.

We reached the trailhead for our first hike, Comet Falls, at 10am and began the 3.8 mile roundtrip, 900 foot ascent. Along the way we enjoyed views of numerous smaller falls. The river basically drains down through a narrow canyon for those 900 vertical feet. Ultimately we reached Comet Falls and... wow. It's a 300' falls with a few smaller tiers below it.

After Comet Falls we drove 1/2 mile or so to Christine Falls, which is right by the roadside. Christine Falls is actually on the same creek as Comet Falls; but the trail passes above it. We couldn't see it from the hike. But it's right there at the roadside, so it's easy to add on.

Our third stop was at Nerada Falls. It's a pretty big falls, about 80' of drop with a wide creek pouring over a rocky wall. It's an easy trek; a wide path leads to it less than 1/4 mile away. The only tough part is the return ascent. That path climbs over 100' in a short distance.

We left the trailhead for Nerada Falls a bit after 3pm. That may seem like a long time before our 8:30pm flight out of Seattle-Tacoma airport but it's not. The drive to the airport was a smidge over 2 hours, plus we needed time for stops washing up and changing clothes, and filling gas. Then there's the whole car-rental-return shuffle, followed by the TSA security shuffle. And SEA is one of those airports where TSA lines are always way slower than most other US airports. On the way out from San Jose I got randomly selected for pat-down screening, and even with that the security shuffle at SJC still took less than half the time at SEA.

Now we're at the airport awaiting our flight home. So far it's showing on time... but this is Southwest, they can always find a way to leave late!

Update: Southwest managed to be on time this time! We rolled from the gate promptly at 8:30, arrived at SJC around 10:30, and got home-home a bit after 11pm.

Hawaii April Travelog #18
Kona - Tue, 12 Apr, 2022, 1:30pm

Today we've flown from Honolulu to Kona, on the "Big Island" of Hawaii. The trek started sometime after 6am when we rose from bed. We were too wrecked for a morning beach walk (previous blog) so we took it easy in the room and packed leisurely.

Packing good news/bad news: It was easier packing our suitcases today than when we started this trip because two bags of our stuff were stolen. 😧🤬😔

Getting to the airport was uneventful. We had a rental car so we didn't have to wait for Lyft/Uber/whatever. We got gas on the way, reminding me once again that gas is freakishly less expensive in Hawaii than California right now. I paid $5.19/gal at a Shell station. Back home, that's the Costco price, and Shell is likely $5.89.

Delays were few at the airport. Bag check took several minutes only because the one family in front of us had, like, five bags per person. Seriously, they a luggage cart per person.

The security line was nil, though Hawk and I both got flagged by TSA for extra security. I actually got double flagged: once because I was randomly selected to have my phone swabbed, and once because the half dozen protein bars I had in my carry-on bag look the same in the X-ray scanner as C4 plastic explosive. They have similar density. Maybe I should reconsider eating them.

Once on the concourse things were quiet. And we had ample time before our flight.

Chinese Garden at HNL Airport (Apr 2022)

Chinese Garden at HNL Airport (Apr 2022)

Even though it was only sometime around 10 I bought a pizza from the airport food court's CPK station. I was hungry. I could have eaten a protein bar but... see above. No, not the picture above, though that's the view I enjoyed while eating my doesn't-even-look-like-an-explosive pizza. HNL is definitely a visually relaxing place to kill time.

Our flight was about 20 minutes late. We didn't really care.

Our flight was also very lightly loaded. There were only about 60 passengers. Of course, that didn't stop the gate agent from telling us it was full. That's because, in gate agent-speak, the 3 adjectives to describe how full a flight is are "Full", "Very Full", and "Totally Full". It's similar to how most fast food restaurants today have 3 sizes of sodas, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. Order a "small" and most staff stare at you as if you've just switched to speaking a dead language.

Weight & Balance: passengers are clustered in groups of 20 front, middle, and back (Apr 2022)

Weight & Balance: passengers are clustered in groups of 20 front, middle, and back (Apr 2022)

We 60 passengers were few enough that the crew needed to do Weight & Balance with us. The flight attendants shift passengers around to put roughly equal size groups at the front, middle, and rear of the aircraft. The picture above shows the empty gaps between clusters of passengers.

It's been so long since I've been on a flight this lightly loaded that I don't remember when's the last time I went through the Weight & Balance process. Maybe 15 years ago? I'm certainly familiar with it, just not from first hand experience. Probably I would've experienced it a lot recently if I were traveling during the first 12 months of the pandemic, when air travel was way, way down. One colleague of mine flew 1-2 trips a month all the way through and said flights were often 25% full. As it was I stayed grounded for 15 months, only flying again after I was fully vaxxed.

Edited to add: The weight & balance stuff was a lot of fuss relative to such a short flight. I mean, it's necessary, but shifting people around took about half as long as the flight itself. At just 163 miles HNL-KOA the flight was like take off, climb a bit, start descending, land.

Hawaii April Travelog #1
38,000' somewhere over the Pacific - Fri, 8 Apr, 2022, 7:20pm

This evening we're flying to Hawaii!

"But wait, didn't you just get back from a road trip to the high desert?" you might ask.

Ha ha, it only seems that way because I got so backlogged with my blog that the weekend road trip we did two weeks ago I only finished posting about a few hours ago. 😅 In fact getting that done before leaving for Hawaii was a goal I set several days ago and had to scramble to finish. I posted our wrap-up of that trip barely 75 minutes before leaving for the airport on this trip. 🥵

Speaking of airports, and for that matter the whole game of planes-trains-and-automobiles, so far it hasn't been too bad.

→ We arrived at the airport to see a crowd in the baggage check area. My elite status got us into the short line where we were served next, waiting only 2 minutes or so.

→ The TSA PreCheck line was pretty backed up, but end-to-end the whole security check processtook barely 9 minutes. I remind myself, when I feel frustrated about such waits, that when I was traveling 150,000 miles a year back in the late 00s— before PreCheck was a thing— I considered getting through a security checkpoint in 10 minutes fast. Living in the future is awesome.

→ Once on the concourse, Hawk and I ate an early dinner before our flight. 4pm was too early to eat, but with our flight boarding at 4:55pm our choices were either eat then or don't eat for the next 8+ hours.

→ The flight is full. Like, full full. A butt in every seat. ...Or so they said. There's 1 seat empty, and it's the middel next to me! Total score! I've got an aisle seat in the exit row, with extra leg room, and nobody sitting next to me. Hawk is in row 2 with a window seat, her preference. We'll be together the next 9 days, we can manage 7-8 hours apart for now. Ahh, legroom in the exit row!

→ We left on time.

→ OTOH, wifi access has been very spotty. Almost 2 hours after departure I've just now gotten a connection. We'll see how long it lasts.

On the whole it's So far, so good.

Speaking of which, I think it's time to hit up the flight attendant for a second beer. 🍻

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Page Summary

Off to Panama!
14.5 Hours to Sydney
Global Entry: Now No Paperwork, But Still Long Lines
Global Entry: Set for the Next 5 Years
Global Entry Interview: Scheduled. Tomorrow!
Global Entry: And Now We Wait
Have Passport, Will Travel
Heels Up Before Wheels Up
A Bunch More Waterfalls at Mt. Rainier
Island Hopping in the Pacific
Off to Hawaii!

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with tsa

Off to Panama!

14.5 Hours to Sydney

Global Entry: Now No Paperwork, But Still Long Lines

Global Entry: Set for the Next 5 Years

Global Entry Interview: Scheduled. Tomorrow!

Global Entry: And Now We Wait

Have Passport, Will Travel

Heels Up Before Wheels Up

A Bunch More Waterfalls at Mt. Rainier

Island Hopping in the Pacific

Off to Hawaii!