gooselee

The $99/year cost I mentioned is $79/year for CLEAR + ($100÷5)/year for GE/Pre.

CLEAR was not a good value to me until they opened at my home airport (ATL). I frequent IAD but it's a big difference when it's an option on 90% of your trips vs. maybe 30-40%.

kennycrudup

Of course, experiences vary, but:

1 - "5 or 10 mins", every time and 2 - YMMV and it depends on where you depart. As long as it's at SJC I'll continue to get it, as you get cut in front of the PC line. I have seriously spent more time the times my electronics-laden backpack gets Nitrogen(?) searched than any other aspect of flying, and when they leave my bag alone it is literally 5-8 minutes curb to gate; it's September 10th all over again.

alchemista

it only really saves you that much time if you use that time somehow productive otherwise. do you adjust your plans to arrive to the airport 5-10 minutes later because of your Clear? Or is it just the annoyance of being in line for a few minutes?

There would be times when I really do need those 5 minutes, but it's not like every single time I'm really wasting them, just standing in line instead of sitting in a chair. If Clear or another program did more than just save you line wait time (like a walk-through crew-like lane as someone mentioned early in the thread), then there would be more value.

kennycrudup

It removes a lot of the non-determinism; there's times at SJC where even the PC line either has to go thru the "dog show", or when they feel like pissing people off and it's slow and snaked around to the entrances (yet there's Thousands Standing Around doing nothing), sometimes making PC a crapshoot. Knowing that 99% of the time I know how long security will take makes planning for the day (or how soon I have to leave work), or the ride there and especially when flying standby how soon I can be at the gate much easier.

... but hey, it's a free country; it's really easy to not use or have CLEAR.

gooselee

I won't speak for anyone else, but I definitely do.

As I'm sure others do, I have my home-to-gate and office-to-gate routines planned and timed quite well. My usual routine is to leave my house 90 mins before departure time (with obvious adjustments if it's rush hour or something), which generally has me walking up to the gate either just as boarding is beginning or very shortly thereafter. Before CLEAR, this was more like 2 hours, because even the Precheck lines could be unpredictable - but...sometimes I would arrive at the gate while boarding was already underway, and sometimes I'd get to spend 20-30 mins sitting around an airport lounge, maybe shooting off a couple emails or something.

But the BIG payoff is on the way home, where I don't have a known routine and I don't have as much control over my schedule. I tend to allow a little extra time to get to my non-home airports since I don't know traffic patterns or whatever as well, meaning I often get there earlier than I really need to be, and sometimes really early if a meeting ends early or the drive isn't as long as I'd thought or whatever. There absolutely have been times where that 5-10 mins CLEAR/Pre shaves off a security line means I get to the gate in time to hop on an earlier flight, vs. missing the cutoff and having to wait around for the next flight.

I will happily pay $99/year if it helps me even just one time that year get home an hour earlier.

tvtd

Xlr

I'm having to show my ID's and boarding passes to the TSA ID-checking human as well. This is degrading the experience - I thought the point was to skip the ID check?

The value now is to put a hard cap on how long I have to wait (~20 minutes). That's helpful at unfamiliar airports, but it changes the value proposition.

kennycrudup

<deleted by moderator> ... where are you, Xlr? At SJC, they have to bring my phone to the TDC while I stay in line, but the TSA doesn't even look my way. <deleted by moderator>.

tvtd

kennycrudup

Which airport is this? (It's not the case at any of the airports I use the most.)

gooselee

This is how CLEAR works at many airports I go to. ATL, DFW, DAL, IAD, MCO are recent ones that come to mind.

MCO is actually hit or miss. Sometimes CLEAR will escort you straight up to the screening area. Sometimes they'll just dump you midway into the snaking non-CLEAR line.

kennycrudup

You can't ask to be escorted to the PC line (provided it's open and you're eligible)? Luckily at SJC (95% of my CLEAR uses) CLEAR and PC are on the same side, landside.

gooselee

Oh, I meant just that the Clear line merges with the non-CLEAR screening lines after ID check. Can be either PC or non-PC.

Some places like ATL have a dedicated Clear+PC line (and separate Clear w/o PC) feeding into a PC screening area. Others (DAL/IAD) just have a single Clear line and depending on eligibility they send you to PC or non-PC.

But in all those cases, after passing ID check, you're sent to the same screening line/area as non-CLEAR pax, and often the bulk of the line is PAST the ID check, thus using Clear doesn't really do much.

Zorak

That's only true on the WN/terminal B side of SJC. In terminal A the CLEAR and Pre lanes are on opposite sides and they lead you across the security area if you have both.

Points Scrounger

Approaching security at SEA the other night, the regular lines looked like a holiday mob scene! Clear + PC meant under five minutes for me from stepping up to the Clear machine until my bag came out of the TSA screen.