Skipping Airport Lines With Kids: Global Entry, PreCheck, CLEAR

Airport lines are miserable alone and radioactive with children. The trusted-traveler landscape quietly became much friendlier to families — most parents just haven't heard.

Global Entry: The Kids Are Free Now

Since October 1, 2024, applicants under 18 pay no fee when a parent or legal guardian is a Global Entry member or applying alongside them. The adult fee is $120 for five years — and each membership includes TSA PreCheck. Two things parents should know going in: every child still files their own application and completes enrollment like any applicant, and approval isn't instant — start months before the big international trip, not weeks. For a family that leaves the country even once a year, this is now the best $240 a couple can spend in travel: the whole household skips the immigration hall, kids included, at no extra cost.

No Global Entry yet? Mobile Passport Control is the free fallback: CBP's app, no application or interview, up to 12 family profiles on one phone, accepted at about 35 US international airports — it uses a shorter line than the general queue at most of them.

PreCheck With Kids: Two Age Rules

• 12 and under: they simply walk through the PreCheck lane with an enrolled parent. Free, no enrollment, and their boarding pass doesn't need the PreCheck marking.
• 13–17: they can use the lane only if the PreCheck indicator prints on their own boarding pass, which requires being on the same airline reservation as the PreCheck-enrolled adult — and TSA reserves the right to randomly exclude a teen from the marking.

Two practical notes: if your teen has no Known Traveler Number (KTN), leave that field blank (a wrong number kills the indicator for everyone on the reservation) — and once a child in a big family turns 13, booking everyone on one reservation stops being a preference and becomes the thing that keeps the family in one line. That cuts against the split-booking tactics in the four-seats guide — when you must split, keep each teen on a PreCheck parent's reservation (and see the seating guide — split bookings weaken the family-seating guarantees too).

CLEAR: Under-18s Ride Free

Kids 17 and under go through the CLEAR+ lane free with a member — no enrollment at all. To use the combined CLEAR + PreCheck lane, the child also needs to qualify for PreCheck under the age rules above. CLEAR is the most skippable of the three unless someone in the family gets it free — several premium travel cards cover the fee as a credit, so check what you're already holding against the annual fee calculator before paying cash for it.

What We'd Set Up, In Order

1. Global Entry for every family member if you travel internationally at all — the kids are free now, and it bundles PreCheck.
2. PreCheck alone if you're domestic-only — and once anyone hits 13, book the family on one reservation.
3. Mobile Passport Control on a parent's phone regardless — free insurance for the trip where Global Entry approval didn't come through in time.
4. Put everyone's trusted-traveler numbers in the same document as the kids' airline accounts — the airport is the wrong place to hunt for a KTN.

Rules verified August 2026 against TSA, CBP, and CLEAR's published policies. Enrollment rules shift — check the official pages when you apply.