The Airport Security Shortcut That Isn't Precheck
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The Airport Security Shortcut That Isn’t PreCheck Clear, a private trusted-traveler program, is expanding thanks to longer TSA lines and a Delta linkup A look at Clear, a company offering a path to jump TSA lines and get through airport security with no delays. Is it worth it? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero to discuss. Photo: Clear By SCOTT MCCARTNEY June 22, 2016 1:25 p.m. ET 135 COMMENTS Would you pay $10 to $15 a month for a guaranteed cut to the front of some crowded airport security lines, even ahead of PreCheck members and first-class passengers? Clear is a private trusted-traveler program sanctioned by the Transportation Security Administration. It has lanes at only 13 airports—San Francisco, Denver and Orlando, Fla., among them. Once enrolled, members go to Clear’s faster lane instead of TSA and have their identity verified by fingerprint or iris scan. Then they go straight to the X-ray machine. The speedy service is finding new life because airport security screening lines have disrupted so many passengers this year. Enrollment this year through June tripled, compared with the same period a year earlier, and now 500,000 people are enrolled. Delta Air Linesbought 5% of the company in April. It will be giving Clear memberships to its top-level frequent fliers and helping Clear open up at more airports, including Delta hubs, by the end of this year. Airports like Seattle-Tacoma International, which has had big problems with long lines, have invited in Clear, with service to start in July. Sea-Tac had been talking with Clear for several years, and decided to bring it in before wait times escalated, airport spokesmanPerry Cooper says. Clear says it is making it easier for airports to make room for its operation at crowded checkpoints by shrinking the space it needs, moving from large kiosks to portable computer tablets for its ID verification. By the end of the year, Clear will be in 24 airports, chief executive Caryn Seidman-Becker says. “When you don’t have to take anything out of your wallet, it’s transformative. It’s step one to a faster, better experience,” she says. Verifying identity at TSA checkpoints is just the beginning of what Clear and other biometric technology companies hope to do at airports. Just as ATMs shortened bank waits and toll tags sped up driving, identifying people by their fingerprints, eyes or photographs may shorten airport lines and speed up what has become a lengthy process. Clear and Alaska Airlines are already using biometrics in San Jose, Calif., for boarding passes— travelers can get on flights with just their fingerprints. Clear hopes airlines will start using biometrics to simplify entrance to airport clubs—two fingers on a reader instead of showing a card or having a clerk verify membership. Clear is replacing kiosks with tablet computers hooked to fingerprint or iris scanners to reduce the space it needs at airports and make it easier to squeeze into crowded checkpoint areas. PHOTO: CLEAR Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program uses fingerprint readers to identify trusted travelers who can skip passport control lines. Airlines are working on baggage tags issued from biometric identification instead of driver’s license and reservation number. And retailers may someday use biometrics to speed up purchases at airport stores, since Clear has customer credit cards on file. Another path: sports stadiums. The San Francisco Giants, Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins are using Clear to give fast access to member fans at baseball games. The New York Yankees have tried Clear for suite access. Clear doesn’t do background checks. It verifies identity by checking passports or driver’s licenses, plus specific questions on past history similar to credit-application type queries. Enrollment can be done in a few minutes. Clear originally issued cards, but now just identifies members by the fingerprints, iris scans and photographs it collects. At checkpoints, Clear employees verify identity, check boarding passes through TSA’s system, then carry the Clear member’s bags to the X-ray machine belt. All Clear members still go through physical screening. The cost of such privilege is $179 a year, but Clear does offer discounts, such as a current $59 Groupon for a nine-month membership. Family members are $50 and children under 18 are free. Delta says it will offer free Clear memberships to its diamond-level frequent fliers shortly and discounted rates for all members of its SkyMiles frequent-flier program. Clear was launched in 2006 by Verified Identity Pass Inc., a company founded by New York journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill. He was frustrated that the newly formed TSA was putting everyone through the same screening process even though some people were willing to undergo background checks for expedited screening. Verified Identity won over few airports and few customers and went bankrupt in 2009. A new company, Alclear, bought Clear out of bankruptcy in 2010 and offered to honor the 160,000 existing memberships. Alclear was formed by Ms. Seidman-Becker and co-founder Ken Cornick, Clear’s president and chief financial officer. The company is based in New York. Long lines for security screening, such as this one May 5 at Denver International Airport, have sparked rapid growth in Clear sign-ups. Enrollments have tripled so far this year compared with 2015. PHOTO: ANDY CROSS/THE DENVER POST/GETTY IMAGES Some travelers say the certainty of not having to wait in TSA lines at airports with a Clear station allows them to schedule more meetings on business trips or spend more time at the beach. They can show up at the airport only a few minutes before flights start boarding. “It’s almost like you’re paying to get out of jail,” says John Ormesher,a Florida-based semiconductor distributor who travels frequently for business and pleasure and signed up for Clear in January 2015. He’s loved it so far. “As PreCheck has gotten more and more crowded, it really is nice, because if there are 25 or 30 or 50 people in a PreCheck line, we jump right ahead of all those folks,” Mr. Ormesher says. But others think it’s wasteful, since PreCheck lines are usually relatively short, even when regular screening lines are long. Phil Corriveau, a consultant in Raleigh, N.C., signed up for Clear when it first started and renewed his membership for five years. He still has more than two years remaining, but he hasn’t bothered to reactivate. “I don’t see any advantage to going back to Clear,” Mr. Corriveau says. He uses PreCheck. Clear faces a chicken-and-egg problem with airports: Many are reluctant to contract with the company because enrollment in their city is small. But Clear says membership rolls are small in some cities because the service isn’t available. Miami International Airport brought Clear into two checkpoints a year ago because it wanted to offer a customer-friendly option. But the service “has not had a major impact on our overall checkpoint throughput,” airport spokesman Greg Chin says. Miami expects usage to pick up with Delta’s push for its frequent fliers. Las Vegas McCarran International Airport says Clear verifications at its checkpoints tripled in the first four months of 2016 compared with the prior year, but remain very small. In March, for example, Clear handled 10,203 passengers, or one-half of 1% of the two million people who departed from McCarran that month, the airport says. It isn’t clear if Clear saves TSA time processing passengers. A TSA spokesman says the document-checking process is likely to be faster, but TSA has never studied that and doesn’t know of any locations where Clear has saved TSA manpower. Clear, TSA says, is a “concierge service” that operates under contracts with airports to make screening quicker and easier for some customers. TSA monitors and inspects Clear but doesn’t share data. The agency says getting cleared by Clear only means you go to front of the travel document check line. At some airports, TSA lets travelers verified by Clear go right to screening. At others, TSA officers double-check boarding passes after Clear. Write to Scott McCartney at [email protected] .