For travelers lucky enough not to know, SSSS stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection. It’s the Transportation Security Administration’s way of flagging airline passengers for “enhanced” screening. An SSSS code stamped on your boarding pass overrides pre-approval through a Trusted Traveler Program such as TSA PreCheck and can add 15 to 45 minutes (or more) to your boarding process.

Unfortunately, there are many groups of travelers who are no strangers to being flagged repeatedly for invasive TSA screenings. But for fliers privileged enough to have a usually smooth process through security, the SSSS codes can come as a shock.

I’ve traveled to more than 70 countries but never encountered the SSSS code until my partner and I returned from a month-long trip to Turkey and Georgia last fall. Although we flew directly from Istanbul to Dallas and breezed through immigration without incident (thanks, Global Entry!), we have been SSSS’d three times since: flying from Dallas to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to New Orleans, and New Orleans to Minneapolis. In each instance, the first indication that something was wrong was our inability to check in online or at a self check-in kiosk. Only when an airline agent printed our tickets did we see it: SSSS.

After approaching security, the TSA agent who scanned our boarding passes asked us to step aside while he radioed his supervisor. “We got a quad,” he said. That’s TSA shorthand for SSSS.

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Posted from Conde Nast Traveler