Hawaiian Airlines Passengers See TSA PreCheck Disappear During Peak Holiday Travel

Passengers flying with Hawaiian Airlines during the year-end holiday period have reported the sudden disappearance of TSA PreCheck status on their boarding passes, despite active enrolment and correctly linked profiles. Travellers discovered the issue at online check-in, where boarding passes for both interisland and mainland flights were issued without the PreCheck indicator. Once generated, the passes offered no option to correct or reissue them.

Earlier warnings about the issue briefly appeared in Hawaiian Airlines’ app, then vanished, leading some customers to believe the problem had been resolved. That reassurance proved misplaced. The absence of TSA PreCheck only became clear after boarding passes were issued, leaving passengers directed into standard security queues. No guidance, system prompt, or customer-facing fix was available at the time of check-in.

Hawaiian Airlines later confirmed on its website that it is experiencing a technical issue causing TSA PreCheck indicators to fail to display on some boarding passes. The airline advised affected passengers to use general security screening and said it is working with an unnamed vendor to resolve the problem. No timeline has been given, and it remains unclear which routes or bookings are affected.

Security impact during peak travel periods

The disruption arrives during one of the busiest travel periods of the year, particularly across Hawaii’s interisland network. Losing PreCheck access puts extra strain on airport security lines that are already busy and leaves less room for error for travellers dealing with short connection times. At major Hawaiian airports, early arrivals are already recommended, and longer security waits increase the risk of missed flights during peak holiday schedules.

This latest issue follows a series of recent technology failures affecting Hawaiian and its partner airline Alaska, including data centre outages and cloud service disruptions. While smaller in scale, the timing has magnified its impact. With no workaround available and no manual fix at airports, passengers are being urged to check boarding passes carefully and allow extra time, even when long-standing PreCheck enrolment is in place.