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CLEAR is a paid program that’s supposed to solve this but the more successful CLEAR becomes, the less useful it is. CLEAR has long lines, too!
So here’s a little trick that can get you through security much faster at some airports, and make CLEAR useful again.
As of this writing, CLEAR (Clear Secure Inc., NYSE: YOU) shares are down 20% this morning after the company revealed that new signups were down to a trickle. Ultimately the paradox of CLEAR is that the more they grow, they less successful they become.
A bipartisan California bill would ban CLEAR in the state’s airports. Sponsors view the service, which identifies passengers through their biometrics and escorts them to the front of security queues in exchange, as anti-egalitarian.
The benefit would have expired this year, but the good news is that American Express has exercised the first of its two one-year extensions contained in their existing agreement.
CLEAR may have greater employee accountability than TSA – they say they fired the people responsible for last year’s lapses and their managers – but you’re still handing over your biometrics to a company and trusting them to manage those well, just as you’re trusting the federal government when you join PreCheck or Global Entry.
So how well are they managing them?
French-based Idemia makes the machines TSA uses to verify ID and signs people up for PreCheck. They don’t want people skipping TSA ID checks, and CLEAR recently won a contract to onboard as a provider of PreCheck signups. So they’re in a “power struggle” against CLEAR, with both sides signing up high powered lobbyists.
TSA has put in writing in a letter to CLEAR that “it would require that a smaller proportion of Clear members undergo additional identity vetting.”
In both cases, an employee didn’t follow protocol. And in both cases, the employees and their managers were fired, and all employees went through re-training. You’d never get that kind of response from TSA!
The TSA has been working to end the ‘skip showing ID’ process for people identified through CLEAR, citing a security incident last year. They wouldn’t end skipping security lines, just not showing ID which is something you can’t always count on now to begin with.
We finally know what happened.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
