Two days in a row, due to customer meetings and personal travel, I’ve had to wake up at 4am for early morning flights that depart at 6:30am. I originally planned to take a late morning flight back to New York from Orlando, but because I had to connect, it would have wasted too much time, and I’d have less time to do all the work that’s been piling up in my email inbox. So I opted for an early morning return to be more efficient.

The crappy part about changing flights within 24 hours is that the picking of seats is limited, plus the chance of getting upgraded to business or first class based on my level of status is probably not going to be great because other people would have already been confirmed for upgrades. And I found out exactly how important it was to have TSE pre-check in Orlando during spring break: the regular security line at the Orlando airport was so long that I couldn’t even see the beginning of it when I arrived at the airport; the TSE pre-check line had 2 people before me when I arrived. If I didn’t have TSE pre-check, there was no way I would have made my flight in time, even with an hour arrival before flight departure.