Precheck is essential for me. I’ve flown about a dozen or two times since pandemic now and I’m always grateful for the time it saves. Recently they added Delta Digital ID at JFK which frankly is amazing. Once you sign up, you can pass through a dedicated line with nothing more than your face. No boarding card, no government ID, nothing! It’s based on facial recognition obviously and it’s really fast. For now at least the lines are really short, too, so passing through this line feels like extremely special service. Can’t recommend it enough, and another reason why I stick with Delta when I fly.
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Oh another tip: those who don’t use TripIt or a similar flight organizing service are truly doing it the hard way. Manually collating this info is a huge waste of time and TripIt makes it almost effortless. I used that service for many, many years but I recently switched to Tripsy which is about 95% as good but much more iOS native (i.e., the design is beautiful), for those who care about that sort of thing.
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Those facial ID machines are all over Europe now.
I’ve long known about NEXUS. In the past couple years, we’ve begun driving between New England and Michigan, and looked longingly at the shorter NEXUS lines at border crossings. Investigating the NEXUS application process, we learned that Global Entry offers NEXUS-equivalent access when returning to the US (though not when entering Canada).
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/global-entry-vs-nexus
As a non-American it is always interesting flying into the US, accepting the alien designation and getting through the processes of passport control, customs, security, porters, and taxi drivers.
My preparation for this rite of passage is to do plenty of courses in meditation, patience management, risk identification and mitigation, standing-in-the-one spot exercises, how-to-answer strange questions and more.
Still sometimes the unexpected happens… like the TSA guy - did he make a joke or not? I’ll be in trouble if it is and I don’t laugh, or I laugh but he didn’t tell a joke. On that occasion I guessed correctly and got a pass.
I’m now in training for my trip to the US in November this year.
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Right now, one of my favorite travel apps is TripCase. You can email flight and hotel information to them and it creates an itinerary. You can then combine flight and hotel information into a single trip. The best part it, flight times get updated over time as the airlines make schedule adjustments. On travel day, gate information and on time or delayed flight information is provided. You even get arrival gates so you can figure out how much time you need for your next flight.
As far as MPC is concerned, I’ve been out of the country three times this year and haven’t had the opportunity ti use it. US immigration is using a photo ID process now. They don’t even look at your passport. They take your picture and log you in.
Was it IdentoGO? That was who I dealt with back in 2018. Yep, the renewal was totally online with the TSA.
Yep, IdentoGO, looked back on the old emails. Just down from the 13/113 split in Dover. Very non-descript building - if if were a house, which I think it was converted from, it probably wouldn’t have been allowed to be occupied(!) If I remember…
One travel trip I have is a very simple one. Even with a packing list app, it is easy to forget something while you are leaving! I put a “don’t forget” list on a post-it note, and then stick it to the inside of my door.
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I actually pile the items at the front door…
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