This is horrible news! Flying out of Atlanta this saved me about a half hour every Monday morning. GRRR!
Agreed. What a shame - especially since they took the two premium lines and converted them. I never had a problem at ATL and the one time I used it at JFK - the agent was so helpful: she realized I was leaving from T4 rather than T3 and she walked me over to that checkpoint personally.
I will, of course, try to get this back from my credit card. But I'd rather have the benefit of the quick line on Monday mornings. I could make it car-to-train in seven minutes, flat.
I am not surprised. I have only used it a few times this year as I normally travel with my wife who is not a member and at IND it never saved me a huge amount of time but it was nice to know exactly how much time it would take to get through security. At IND there was always several people working the lane and I never really saw that many people using it. Too bad.
I'm going to miss it A LOT. Flying out of LGA 2-3 times every month made it totally worthwhile. I'm ATL based so it also helped on outbounds as well (though I often flew off hours so the benefit was less evident than LGA).
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I never really understood this Clear business.
You pay your money and then give a private (and now defunct) company a bunch of personal and biometric information. Then, when you go to the airport, you still have to take off your shoes, jacket, etc.--go through the same security procedures as everyone else, except for taking a short-cut around the regular lines.
If I'd given that kind of information to a company that's now defunct, I'd be concerned.
I'm going to miss clear ... Granted DEN never had many issues with delays at security at the times I flew, and usually the lines weren't much longer. Also, my PREX status with UAL should help, but I still had 9 months left on my membership. I wonder if I can contact VISA and work with them over it ... I figure that $159 is just a write-off now.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dilemma
I believe too many TSA "agents" thought the people using Clear were getting "special" treatment, and were annoyed by the frequent fliers. Plus, Clear rolled out the service too slowly. I think this final nail in the coffin was the drop in business travel because of the economy.
I though Clear was a great idea. However, it wasn't available at enough airports for me to use it @ $199/year!
I agree, I had clear only, because of SPG. I have had it for six months and was only able to use it a handful of times. Living in Nashville, it really did not help me a lot if they had more airports they might have had a chance, but they needed at least double to triple the airports served.
I believe too many TSA "agents" thought the people using Clear were getting "special" treatment, and were annoyed by the frequent fliers. Plus, Clear rolled out the service too slowly. I think this final nail in the coffin was the drop in business travel because of the economy.
I though Clear was a great idea. However, it wasn't available at enough airports for me to use it @ $199/year!
I had three issues with other people being upset that someone was being put in front of them and smarting off to the clear person. I always thought it worked much better when they had their own lane going.
I'm glad I didn't renew when they made their last push before the price hike. I was already renewed to mid 2010 though
I could wake up an hour before my flights out of SJC, shower, jump in the car, drive to the airport, park in short term, go through security, and still have time for a bagel before boarding started. Literally.
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Always had positive experiences with all of the Clear staff I've encountered.
I wonder what this means for the FLO card as they show all of the clear airports as being able to use their cards at. If they still offer services I would purchase their card simply to be able to bypass the 30-50 minute lines @ MCO. My time is worth the $99/year membership.
I was a huge CLEAR fan. I did an 8 month stint in/out of MCO (to EWR) 2x/week and it saved me 30 minutes or so each trip--it was probably the only reason I was able to do that trip 2x/week and have enough time at the client to make the trip worthwhile.
Flying ex-EWR, I would often take NW over CO because with CLEAR I had a consistent <5 minutes from the car to the gate where CO's Elite lines could be anywhere from 20-30 minutes (although C has been better the past 2-3 months).
I'll miss the consistency--but I'm not surprised the business model failed. I'm a huge fan and told everyone I knew who traveled to sign up, but I got 1 year free from Hyatt, paid for a year and then got a year from Starwood. No company is going to make money off the reduced rates they get from the hotel promos and 1 year paid out of 3.
This is absoluately horrible. I use MCO and the clear lane was a life saver since I live in Daytona Beach and have to drive over an hour to MCO to fly out. Delta REALLY needs to add an elite lane at MCO and observe that they actually have a frequent flyer base and not just passengers who come to screw around at disney world...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by videomaker
I never really understood this Clear business.
You pay your money and then give a private (and now defunct) company a bunch of personal and biometric information. Then, when you go to the airport, you still have to take off your shoes, jacket, etc.--go through the same security procedures as everyone else, except for taking a short-cut around the regular lines.
If I'd given that kind of information to a company that's now defunct, I'd be concerned.
It is too bad. Clear was to have been a verified security but TSA never did like them and punished them. It became nothing more than a glorified VIP service. I used it many times and it was nice to know that you could always get through security quickly. It was unfortunate that it was only available in such scattered locations.
Now the real question. What happens to the information that they had on us?
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Bleh!
I fly in 7 hours, and was looking forward to zipping through security in the morning. I understand why some people don't like the program, but this definitely puts a crimp in my travel schedule.
No more showing up expecting to get from my car to the plane in 17 minutes.
I can think of a good friend of mine here who will tell me everyone should be able to expect an efficient screening process. While I agree, I was happy to pay a couple of sheckels to guarantee mine.
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