Premium Screening: Does Fast Track screening save you any time in security screening? Photo / Elaine Thompson, AP
Premium Screening: Does Fast Track screening save you any time in security screening? Photo / Elaine Thompson, AP
Comment:
I've seen the worrying future of air travel, and it cost me $10 for the privilege.
Having taken more short-haul flights than I'd like to admit in the past month, there is a worrying new trend that has popped up over Europe this summer: the Fast Track security pass.
Amid a summer of screening backlogs and airport labour shortages, the Fast Track or "priority screening" queue was supposed to offer a stress-free way to bypass the chaos.
While it doesn't let you skip the metal detector and it does allow you to march past the queues of worried-looking passengers, watching time tick down on the departure boards - providing you pay up to $14 to get there.
A cynic would say it is a way to extract more cash from stressed-out families. I am one of those cynics.
It is hard to tell if the fast track does anything to cut the waiting times in airports, particularly now there's an incentive to make waiting times for non-paying as painfully slow as possible.
Priority screening is nothing new. In 2019 Auckland Airport introduced a "prepared traveller" line to their security screening lanes to speed up domestic screening, but they don't have to pay for the privilege. Passengers with mobility issues or lucky enough to be flying in premium cabin classes will know there is a fast track behind discreet wooden panels which cuts out the queues in the International Terminal's departures gate - but it's not something the airport advertises, never mind charges for.
But could this change if our airspace gets busier and more passengers return?
In the UK, the "Fast Track" greets you at every turn. QR codes selling the promise of jumping the queue you find yourself stuck in - "pay now and it could all be over".
Could paid-for Fast Track screening lanes appear in New Zealand airports? Photo / Thomas Bywater
It's 6am at Edinburgh Airport and, having checked my luggage, I'm directed back out the door and to the end of a line of passengers, circling through the taxi ranks and around the building. Suddenly the charge looks less outrageous, as much as it grates on my principals.
Of course, some airports charge an additional fee for on-the-day bookings.
Gateways to tourist hot spots, like Barcelona Airport, have also introduced ad-hoc fast track charges for travellers at peak times.
In the US some airports and even airlines have begun selling fast-track subscriptions. On top of the TSA's Precheck and Global Entry subscriptions - from $140 a year to cut immigration queues and screening on entry into the US - American Airlines has begun their own with their "Five Star" private screening for members. Sadly New Zealand passport holders are not the list of eleven nationalities eligible for the Global Entry programme.
London's Luton Airport, which historically has had no qualms with charging passengers for "extras", might have the best advertising strategy.
Previously courting outrage for charging $2 per plastic bag for checked liquids, it was first in the queue for a fast track racket.
Currently, international and domestic passengers share the same heaving screening lanes in departures. Unless, of course, you have bought a pass, in which case you sail through a glass tunnel to your own screening area, right past the view of other travellers.
But is it worth paying extra to avoid the pain? Most airports' terms and conditions admit they cannot guarantee it will be any quicker. Those pre-booking a pass may find, on arrival, that the queues they aim to bypass do not exist.
