wilp888

At the International terminal, the TSA agent guarding the WTMD can still point you to the MMW. Happened to me in June.

UshuaiaHammerfest

As scary as that is, that's true for any company you give your information to.

That said, I'm a little hesitant to try CLEAR for this reason. If it were the same as precheck, I'd definitely be in, but I'm not sure just skipping the line to the TDC and xray is worth it.

SNA_Flyer

Pre kills Clear any day of the week. Shoes stay on, laptop and liquids stay in bag, and no RAPE-o-SCOPE.

None of those can be assured for Clear.

mikew99

Unfortunately, Pre-check can't be assured, either. Here's hoping that eventually there is a way to combine the two.

dan1431

I was talking with a "Suit" at the MCO Clear Enrollment office a few weeks ago about CLEAR, PRE and the possibility in the future of CLEAR members being eligible for PRE.

The suit said that originally CLEAR was supposed to offer many (if not all???) the benefits of the current PRE program, hence the use of biometrics to prove identity. However, he said that TSA backed out and left PRE as simply a way to jump to the head of the line, which is why in his opinion the first incarnation of the CLEAR failed.

He agreed that to simply jump the line biometrics are not exactly required, but the equipment had already been invested in and there is a hope that in the future TSA will re-consider allowing CLEAR to offer the same benefits as PRE, which would require the biometric stuff.

I have no idea if the suit was blowing smoke up my ... to sell a CLEAR membership (I did not buy a membership at the time) or if he was telling the truth, but I figured I would pass the info along (for whatever it is worth).

Dan

SNA_Flyer

I have been 100%, so I think it works pretty good. Giving biometric & private data to an unknown private company is much worse than giving it to Global Entry, IMO.

wilp888

I have Clear membership and PreCheck with GE. The best thing about Clear is that it brings certainty to the process. I know with Clear that I will be through in 5 minutes or less but there is no certainty to the PreCheck process. At airports with both Clear and PreCheck, I will always choose Clear.

mikew99

You must not fly out of SFO -- my success rate of PreCheck there is -0-% (vs. 100% for Clear). The last time I was at an airport that had PreCheck was at LAS, and I couldn't use it because I was flying on UA, which didn't support it yet.

I look forward to having a choice, but at SFO, Clear is my only option at the moment.

brosnan6

Is there even Precheck at SFO? I've never seen signage or a separate lane. As recently as the past week

14940674

There is no PreCheck at SFO. It is not even listed as "Coming Soon" on the TSA PreCheck map.

LIH Prem

Things may change at SFO when they move the domestic premium lobby back closer to where it used to be (near the entrance to the main pier), but for now, Clear is a much better option than the premier lines which are out of the way for most people. Is it worth paying for? That's a subjective call. It's certainly worth trying for free unless you have a privacy issue with it. I'm using it because I had time left over from my original subscription, and will evaluate the situation/costs when that expires. And it works great right now as a guaranteed time saver. For one thing, I don't have a 2 x long walk to/from the domestic premier lanes and back and there's no wait to use Clear regardless of how short/long the line is at the premier lanes.

Pre-check is coming to SFO, it's been announced.

SNA_Flyer, from what I've read, you've been lucky so far to always get selected. There's randomness built into pre-check to ensure that you can't know ahead of time if you will be selected for reduced or normal screening.

-David

brosnan6

CLEAR has been nothing but a timesaver for me out of SFO (I only fly DL so not sure about the setup for UA terminal). I'm in the same boat as you w/r/t the original subscription credit. Though there was recently the SPG promo for giving it to somebody for a free year so I just signed myself up for a new subscription (cust service refused to budge on letting me just add a year to my own membership) - we'll see if I run into any issues when I go to complete enrollment since I haven't done that yet. Definitely wouldn't mind getting another year for free

PreCheck, when it works at the the other airports, is absolutely frickin amazing. I've been batting about a 70% rate with getting selected and I still cant get over being able to just waltz through security. Reminds me of traveling when I was a kid!

Boraxo

Applied for CLEAR last week at SFO, my card arrived today just in time for my next flight on Monday. Timing could not be better!

SFO777

Another wow experience @ SFO today. Mrs. SFO & I were the only 2 pax in the T-3 Clear lane today. Friendly Clear staffer opened gate to screening area, cut in front of everyone and brought us trays, as roughly 100 UA pax in queue looked on. ^
Total elapsed time from entering Clear lane to sitting at a table at Yankee Pier: less than 3 minutes.

SNA_Flyer

Most of the problems I've read about in the AA forum (I don't fly DL or UA) with Pre failures have to do with names not matching properly with Global Entry. While I have GE, I don't use that in my profile, and I think that is what has made it work properly for me.