Mess at ATL this morning
 

I thought I had seen a long CLEAR line before, but nothing tops today. Is this normal now?

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...1c4c90894e.jpg

How long was the regular Precheck line? With a CLEAR line that long, it's a fair shot that standard Precheck may actually be faster.

International (F) is way faster in the mornings as most international flights are later in the day.

Actually having tested it couple of times I would almost guarantee it. What I do is pick out some person getting in the other line at the same time I pick my line Then I periodically see where the are. If I made the error of picking clear they always get to ID check before me.

And right now the wait times are showing longer at International that for South Pre-check (they don't bother to tell you how much time paying for Clear costs you :) )

It did look worse it was totally wrapped thru almost 3/4 of the queue they have setup.

How long did the wait end up being?

It took me about 40 mins to get thru the CLEAR line. Not a huge deal as I still had a few mins to visit the skyclub, but good to know in case you are not used to such a wait.

How does this differ from the usual cluster eff that ATL is every day ending in -day?

ATL is hands down my least favorite airport in the US to be an originating pax.

Helpful to know. That's a heck of a line for Clear + Precheck, compared to any other airport I've been to with Precheck (let alone Clear!). Even JFK T4, insane as it is, rarely has a wait much longer than 5-10 mins for Precheck, and Clear is usually shorter than that.

So true. I've seen more TAs working at the ticket counter at random outstations than I have at ATL. It's a shame that DL can't/won't get their act together at their flagship hub.

Maybe its just the time/day I have been flying. I typically fly late afternoon, 3pm-5pm departures out of ATL. This is my first morning departure in quite some time? Probably a year.

On the rare occasion I'm forced to originate in ATL I usually go to the non-Sky Priority desks since its generally faster. Last time I was in ATL which was in Feb for Hops in the Hanger I actually flew out of CHA and connected at ATL rather than originate there.

Guess I'm spoiled in BOS... on a 'bad' day the Clear Precheck line is perhaps 5 min to get to the security agent. The wait for the metal detector is almost always longer than going through the Clear process.

This is only going to get worse as multiple credit cards are now offering Clear basically for free.

That's in addition to Delta's stockpile of Diamond members that has been accrued over the past three years of status and MQM rollover. Which means the Delta hubs have a lot of Clear customers, particularly ATL.

:D

David

It's been consistently like this on my last few AM departures. Mostly why I try to avoid them if I can.

Morning peak period (early) can be painful. I went through at 9:45 AM this morning with no Clear line at all and what looked like 5-10 mins in the adjacent Precheck line. Everything past security was a screwup by Delta, but that's for another thread.