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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the reasons I love the Midwest and living in smaller cities. My airport is international and flies just about anywhere you want to go, but 90% of the time I walk up to an empty line and I'm told "we don't have a precheck lane open, just walk on through". As a consultant, I fly the busiest times (monday and thursday), but the only trouble I've ever had was in Denver where I waited almost an hour and a half in a security line before I got my precheck approval.

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With the exception of Chicago, I agree. St. Louis, Indianapolis, KC, and many other airports have direct flights to most parts of the US (or connect through Chicago almost anywhere in the world), and I've never waited more than 20 minutes in the TSA lines.

Due to the frequency of travel, I do have Pre-Check, but I hate that I had to pay extra money to get what I think should be the normal experience for all domestic travelers.

KC is a great get-out-and-go airport but it's terrible airport to have a layover in. It was designed to be the most efficient airport in the country in the era before security screenings were a normal thing. Pre-9/11 airport security put somewhat of a damper on this, but it was made many times worse when the TSA came into being and implemented the concept of "sterile areas". Now, if you get a layover in KC, you're literally stuck in a glass box with five gates, a juice cart, and a bathroom for its entirety (unless you wish to dirty yourself with the non-sterile area and go through security again).

If 0 people had signed up for Pre-Check it would get shut down.

It's nicely described by the Prisoner's dilemma.

No, it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma.

If there were no Pre-Check, normal lines would still be long—they'd just be slightly shorter.

I'd much rather pay for dramatically shorter lines than to save that money and have slightly shorter lines in normal security.

Does any midwest airport outside of Chicago actually fly "anywhere you want to go", internationally?

This. I don't think you can fly direct out of IND to anywhere without going through ORD. And if I had to guess, to fly from IND to ORD I bet you have to route through DET. Obviously this is sarcasm but it is very frustrating. It is easier to just drive to ORD and fly from there. By the time you get to IND x number of hours before your 45min flight and then land & change planes in ORD, it is just easier to start in ORD.

Sure: MSP.

Most people do not realize, but Denver is a very busy airport. It has dropped from it's #10 worldwide ranking in 2010 to #19, but it's still #6 in the US and was just last year overtaken by JFK.

Short lines are nice, but it's also not bad the have direct flights to Europe and many US cities, and pretty low ticket prices.

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