Back in February, we were flying home from Barcelona to NYC with a stop in London. When I got my boarding pass for the London-NYC flight I had the four letters you never wanted to see.

When you get SSSS on your boarding pass, you’re in for an additional security check which can be quite annoying. To my surprise, it wasn’t that bad.

Now, just two trips later, I got those dreaded letters again!

It always surprises me when those S’s show up on my boarding pass considering I have Global Entry which means I’ve already gone through an additional security check to qualify.

Regardless of this, I noticed that while Kim, Lucas and Theo’s boarding passes had TSA Pre printed on them, it was left off of mine. This struck me as odd…

(FYI-We were flying home from Reykjavik (KEF) to New York (JFK) after having an awesome time during our trip to Iceland.)

As we made our way through the airport, we had to scan our boarding passes to proceed. I was pushing Theo in his stroller so I scanned his pass first without issue. The security agent told me to walk through quickly. He said that he’d then scan my boarding pass.

Once he scanned my boarding pass, there was an alert and he told me that I’d need an additional security screening. He was very nice about it and even made some sort of joke.

He then told Kim to go with the kids to the gate while I got screened.

I moved to the next security agent who then asked me a couple of questions. (I knew this couldn’t be all…) A moment later, he passed my boarding pass and passport on to another security agent and I was brought to a very clean area which was kind of like a small room minus a door.

This agent wasn’t as friendly. He then told me to remove my electronics and asked if he could inspect my bag. He then swabbed the items and my bag then ran the swab through a machine.

Next, my hands (top & palms) were swabbed. He also asked me to remove my shoes which were also swabbed.

I was then thanked and told I could put my things away.

All said and done, I’d say the whole security check took around 10 minutes. It was fast enough that Kim and the kids didn’t even make it to the gate!

Final Thoughts:

I, like most of you hate seeing SSSS on my boarding pass. In the past, I’ve had every item from my bag removed and inspected which is incredibly time consuming. On top of that, I’ve had to endure annoying pat downs. Luckily, it hasn’t been too bad the past couple of times.

Have you received the dreaded SSSS? If so, what was your experience like?