Okay, due to changes to the government’s program, we have recognizably made the Secure Flight program a monthly feature of our newsletter. When followed completely, the Secure Flight program can make your travel experience seamless. This past week we had an opportunity to attend a conference call with the TSA that outlined the finer details of the program while answering many questions.

Secure Flight is designed to clear travelers behind the scene using the data required to allow for a boarding pass. Upon clearance, travelers can then proceed to their flight without additional screening. The program enhances the overall security of commercial air travel; providing fair, equitable, and consistent matching across all carriers.

As opposed to before, the TSA is now responsible for comparing the names of all travelers with those names on the watch list. To accomplish this task, they begin by receiving the names of everyone holding a confirmed reservation 72 hours prior to departure. These names are then compared to the watch lists and, after review; the travelers are cleared to access their boarding passes 24 hours prior to departure.

When booking air service, every traveler is required to provide their full name, date of birth, and gender. These details are provided to the air carriers as a part of the ticket and the air carriers submit the details to the TSA.

Currently the carriers and the travel reservation systems are working through their processes to ensure the passenger’s complete name appears on the ticket. This structure change may take some time; however, the TSA ensures that this will not affect anyone’s ability to clear security.

If a passenger’s name is similar to that of an individual’s name on the watch list, then the passenger can work with the TSA to obtain a “Redress Number”. This redress number can be used whenever the passenger makes a reservation for air travel, making clearance much less challenging. To obtain a Redress Number, please visit www.dhs.gov/trip

Next Deadline: August 15th. All traveler information is required to be in the profile and be provided to the carriers. This is an on-going process that is being implemented for the safety and well-being of all passengers.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Corporate Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.