I have had a few people comment (offline) about my entry singing the praises of the TSA. There is such a negative vibe around air travel these days, I think many people are overlooking some of the steps the TSA is taking to make travel easier and their service better.
Here is a subtle example.
My drivers license expires this August 19 on my birthday.
On a flight to Indianapolis in June, the TSA agent noticed the upcoming expiration and said, "don't forget to renew your license." I had no idea the license was about to expire. I recently moved and changed the address on my license, but apparently that did not reset the clock on the expiration.
When I said, "thank you," she said, "we're trained to remind people when it's a few months until expiration since it can take a while to renew." That's good training. Probably makes the job more interesting too.
I applied for the new license last week. At airport security this week in Minneapolis, I showed the guard my license and said, "it's clipped so I'll need to pull out the receipt showing that my new one is in the mail." He said that TSA rules allow him to accept my license for a year after it expires with no extra paperwork. Cheers!
So, TSA is taking it upon itself to remind me about my license and then is showing intelligent flexibility by still accepting the license as ID after it is expired... after all, they want to know who I am not that I have valid driving privileges and qualifying eye sight like the DMV. This really makes sense!
On a more awesome note, they are actively trying to get rid of the "remove your shoes" policy which you can read about at their unusually good blog.
I'm not selling TSA fan club t-shirts yet, but as someone who travels far too much, I really appreciate these efforts.
Here is a subtle example.
My drivers license expires this August 19 on my birthday.
On a flight to Indianapolis in June, the TSA agent noticed the upcoming expiration and said, "don't forget to renew your license." I had no idea the license was about to expire. I recently moved and changed the address on my license, but apparently that did not reset the clock on the expiration.
When I said, "thank you," she said, "we're trained to remind people when it's a few months until expiration since it can take a while to renew." That's good training. Probably makes the job more interesting too.
I applied for the new license last week. At airport security this week in Minneapolis, I showed the guard my license and said, "it's clipped so I'll need to pull out the receipt showing that my new one is in the mail." He said that TSA rules allow him to accept my license for a year after it expires with no extra paperwork. Cheers!
So, TSA is taking it upon itself to remind me about my license and then is showing intelligent flexibility by still accepting the license as ID after it is expired... after all, they want to know who I am not that I have valid driving privileges and qualifying eye sight like the DMV. This really makes sense!
On a more awesome note, they are actively trying to get rid of the "remove your shoes" policy which you can read about at their unusually good blog.
I'm not selling TSA fan club t-shirts yet, but as someone who travels far too much, I really appreciate these efforts.
