PreCheck Meets Its Goal, and Prepares to Expand THE Transportation Security Administration says it has met its goal of having 25 percent of air travelers using the speedy PreCheck security lanes by the end of this year. Good for the T.S.A., I say - and I'm hearing the same positive reactions from travelers who, through no overt effort of their own, are being routinely waved into a PreCheck lane at the airport. But I'm also hearing from some people who thought they had to be officially enrolled to get into the fast lane. What's going on here? The answer is that the agency is putting PreCheck codes on boarding passes of selected "trusted" passengers, who it says are routinely vetted through the Secure Flight program along with everyone else who flies. The perks of PreCheck lanes include allowing passengers to keep shoes and coats on and laptops in their cases. PreCheck passengers walk through the familiar old metal detectors, rather than having to use the body-scan machines that require people to stand with their hands raised while they are scanned electronically by an imager that detects anything on a body, metal or not. The scanners require passengers to remove everything from their persons and pockets, since even a handkerchief will trigger an alarm. In September, the T.S.A. opened PreCheck to people who were not already enrolled through existing programs, such as high-status travelers invited by their airlines, and so-called trusted traveler programs like Global Entry, which provides fast-pass re-entry Customs and Immigration lanes at airports for Americans returning from international trips. Global Entry requires a background check, a personal interview and fingerprinting, and costs $100 for five years. That move - which has spurred concerns of privacy advocates over what information beyond Secure Flight can be retrieved - came as the agency was planning to start yet another PreCheck program, which the T.S.A. administrator, John Pistole, has called "Global Entry Lite." In that one, passengers will join by paying $85 after being fingerprinted at any of 300 enrollment centers. The T.S.A. had said that those centers would begin to open for PreCheck processing in October - but none are yet open. The agency now says the first of those centers should be available for PreCheck processing in a week or two. At the same time, the new expedited screening process has been increasing the numbers of those who use PreCheck lanes, which are available now at more than 100 airports. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue recently joined the program, bringing the total to nine participating airlines; the others are Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian, United, US Airways and Virgin America. The T.S.A. insists that the new expedited phase was part of an "evolution" of the trusted-traveler approach, which the agency says is predicated on devoting fewer security resources to travelers who are presumed, based on their travel histories and profiles as maintained by all airlines in the Secure Flight program, to pose less of a risk. It wasn't a last-minute attempt to meet the 25 percent goal after it became clear that enrollment centers were not on schedule, said a T.S.A. spokesman, David Castelveter. "We did this program where we say we want more people to experience PreCheck, and these may be people that don't fly frequently, who never would be invited into an airline's program, but do not fly enough where they would want to enroll and pay the $85" at enrollment centers, he said. Well, fine. Whatever works to maintain a good level of risk-based security while lessening checkpoint headaches. And from my own view, whatever works to reduce use of those body-scan machines, which the agency said several years ago would eventually replace walk-through metal detectors at nearly all of the 2,000 security lanes at airports. These machines, which the T.S.A. initially referred to as whole-body imagers but then began euphemistically calling A.I.T."s (for advanced imaging technology), have been contentious. Earlier this year, the agency had to remove hundreds of body-scan machines that used X-ray technology, under pressure from Congress over concerns about health hazards as well as criticism that those models produced naked body images. Another model of the machine, which employs radio-wave technology, produces a less invasive stick-figure body image that shows any possessions on the body. There are 741 in use at 160 airports. My own objection to these machines is that they require passengers to divest themselves of everything, including wallets, while standing submissively at a screen with hands up like a criminal suspect, while screeners, in some cases, bark orders. Most screeners are polite, but some, in my experience, are not. Obviously, since the PreCheck lanes require use of metal detector portals and not the costly, intrusive body-scan machines, the agency's plan to use only body-scanners at most checkpoints is no longer operable. Still, as I often say, it's been my experience in general that no truly bad idea ever really dies. Hence what the agency refers to as A.I.T.-2. Even as metal detectors regain life with the expansion of PreCheck, the agency is planning to purchase and test "next-generation" body imagers to better "locate potential threats concealed from view on a passenger," while taking up less room that the current image machines, as the contract solicitation specifications state. The potential contract price: $245 million. Just like bad ideas, the procurement contract process, it seems, has eternal life.