This has been a rough spring for air travel.
Soaring jet fuel costs caused by the war in Iran are pushing airfares higher. Vanishing budget carriers will only make tickets more expensive. And the effects of this year’s record-breaking Department of Homeland Security budget lapse are still rippling through security queues.
How about a tiny piece of good news for a change?
Some first-time enrollees in the Transportation Security Administration’s TSA PreCheck program are getting a discount for a limited time.
As part of the agency’s “Take Off” promotion geared toward boosting TSA PreCheck membership among young people, enrollees under the age of 30 are eligible to save $20 on the application fee through May 31.
To take advantage of the offer, find an in-person enrollment location and submit an application online. Next, gather the required personal documents and complete the in-person portion of the application prior to travel.
No promo code is necessary to get the under-30 discount; it’s automatically applied at the point of sale.
Is this a good deal?
Honesty, even without the limited-time bargain, TSA PreCheck is a fairly affordable and worthwhile investment.
Even during peak travel times, PreCheck waits are more often than not under 10 minutes, and the expedited screening—walking through a metal detector instead of a full-body scanner, leaving on belts and light jackets, leaving electronics and liquids in bags—moves passengers along significantly faster than the general TSA line.
Specific application prices vary by providers. Including the $20 discount, Telos locations charge $65; IDEMIA locations charge $56.75; and CLEAR locations charge $59.95.
Those are all one-time fees for TSA PreCheck, which remains valid for 5 years.
In the case of CLEAR, make sure you only enroll in TSA PreCheck without tacking on CLEAR+, unless you want to pay the expensive fee of $209 per year. (Besides, CLEAR pits travelers against each other by increasing queue wait times for non-CLEAR+ subscribers, and provides little-to-no real security benefit while lining the pockets of a private, for-profit company.)
For more info on the TSA PreCheck May discount for travelers under 30, go to TSA.gov.
