Wow :eek:

Yeah, in my ~50 times flying out of IAD in the last three years I've never seen it even close to that bad. The vast majority were Fridays on the ~7:30pm SFO departure (exact timing moved around a bit over the years) so I was probably clearing around 6:45 but I've taken UA340 my fair share too and not run into that.

While that picture looks bad, each one of those lines goes to a separate ID checker (unless things have changed) so it moves fast. I've seen it like that a few times and don't think I've waited longer than 10-15 mins.

The last three times i've used Clear at IAD lines and processing times have been longer than just doing PreCheck.
Really not that great of an experiecne anymore. I have not seen a crowd as big as the picture in a while, though.

This. The rare times the lines are that long, pre-check is still better than the CF that is the regular lines, especially during the early to late afternoon crush created by all the international departures headed east.

CLEAR had a rather long line this AM. Had a 10 minute wait just to get to TSA agent. IAD is a zoo - really a staffing issue by TSA.

Clear+PreCheck = goodness
 

just there last Friday. downstairs Clear without precheck was the way to go. upstairs clear with precheck line was longer than the regular line....:rolleyes:

It took 35 minutes that day.
And there and in my experience, the bottleneck for pre-check isn't at ID check, but at the belts/detectors after. There are more ID checkers than metal detectors.

LAS does not have a separate line for TSA-pre but does for regular TSA. Same for SAN.

Not quite the same, but SFO has a GS line (or really a separate entrance bypassing the regular precheck line).

WOW....I haven't been through IAD since December before they moved things around. In the past I never had that happen with CLEAR at IAD.

Try any Monday moring at IAD at 7:30 Am. LOOONG lines at Clear and PreCheck.

How many minutes to clear? That is the question. How many people in the lines is largely irrelevant because of the speed with which the three different types of line move.

Fair point. Our line was extremely long per se (longest I've seen at CLEAR but not long in a normal sense). How CLEAR was managing the flow was the issue.

So you're saying they actually need to maintain the 4 CLEAR employees to one CLEAR user ratio they have during off-peak hours?

The last time I was at IAD (last week) the problem is that they moved Clear and Precheck off to the side away from the standard Precheck lines but did not give Clear a dedicated security ID checker or dedicated security screening line or belt. So there was a lot of Clear buildup as the checker alternated between Clear and non Clear and then there was the scrum to get in the screening lines where there was 3 lines going into two belts. Very poor experience from Clear and they blamed TSA (which seems right) . TSA moved Clear to give it more room and get it away from the standard Precheck and then they stiff them on the lines dedicated to Clear.