For fliers who haven’t encountered it earlier than, SSSS on a boarding move stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection. It’s the Transportation Security Administration’s technique of choosing passengers for added safety checks—and no quantity of frequent flying, elite standing, or pre-approval by a Trusted Traveler Program comparable to Clear, NEXUS, Global Entry, or TSA PreCheck ensures immunity.
I realized this the tedious method in 2021, after my husband and I returned from a month-long journey to Türkiye and the Republic of Georgia. The worldwide leg was clean sufficient: We flew immediately from Istanbul to Dallas and breezed by immigration with out concern. The bother started instantly afterward, once we tried to verify in for our connecting flight residence to Minneapolis.
First, the airline app wouldn’t concern our boarding passes. Then the self-service kiosk rejected us, too. It wasn’t till an airline agent printed our tickets that we noticed it: the dreaded SSSS stamped throughout each of our boarding passes.
The TSA agent who scanned our boarding passes requested us to step apart whereas he radioed his supervisor. “We got a quad,” he mentioned. That’s TSA shorthand for SSSS.
The screening was intensive: My husband and I have been separated from our sneakers, coats, and electronics; requested to move by a steel detector and physique scanner; after which subjected to a full-body pat-down. Our arms and ft have been swabbed for hint explosives. Every inch of our carry-ons was unpacked and scrutinized; identical for the checked luggage. The TSA brokers have been well mannered {and professional}, however the delay almost triggered us to miss our flight.
At first, I wrote it off as an annoying one-time hiccup. Then it occurred once more. We have been SSSS’d flying from Dallas to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to New Orleans, and from New Orleans again to Minneapolis. Each time, the primary signal of bother was the identical: We couldn’t verify in on-line or at a kiosk and needed to see an agent for printed boarding passes. Each time, the additional screening added a recent layer of stress to an already tight airport timeline.
While some groups of travelers are all too conversant in being flagged for invasive TSA screenings, others glide by safety with out incident—that’s when an SSSS code can come as an actual shock. And even when the method itself is fast, it will possibly nonetheless throw off the fragile choreography of attending to the gate and settling in for a protracted flight.
What triggers SSSS on a boarding move?
“Years ago, you could travel like a rock star to wherever you liked, on short notice, with no itinerary, pay in cash, stay overnight in party destinations, and do it all on a one-way ticket,” says Frank Harrison, Regional Security Director, Americas at World Travel Protection. “The world has changed.”
One frequent false impression, says Harrison, is that nationwide aviation authorities just like the TSA are the primary screening line for passengers. It’s really the airline. “When you book a plane ticket in today’s digitized world, your airline submits your name, gender, and date of birth to the TSA for clearance,” he says. “Airlines are motivated to ensure you are TSA-approved before you take to the skies [because] there are fines for allowing uncleared passengers onto aircraft.”
Travelers may be marked for reserving one-way tickets, shopping for flights on the final minute, paying in money, flying to or by nations deemed higher-risk, altering an itinerary incessantly, or having a reputation that resembles somebody on a Department of Homeland Security watch checklist. Sometimes, the choice seems to be random.