In dozens of airports across the country, the same scenario plays out repeatedly every day: Two travelers make their way through airport security at the same time. Both travelers have TSA PreCheck on their boarding pass, but one of them heads for the designated (and far pricier) CLEAR® Plus lane.
And yet somehow, the traveler with TSA PreCheck alone wins. Easily.
That's become the story of using CLEAR Plus lanes at airports nationwide. Once a darling of the travel world that promised to cut you to the front of the line and get you through airport security in minutes, CLEAR's track record is shaky at best as it's expanded rapidly to more airports … and increased in price, too.
Whether you get through security in minutes or watch as the TSA PreCheck line passes you by has started to feel like a coin flip – unacceptable odds for a service that costs a whopping $189 a year. It's notoriously bad in airports like Atlanta (ATL) and Denver (DEN), where bloated rolls of flyers with Delta or United status get discounts on CLEAR Plus or have top-dollar Amex travel cards in their wallet that cover the cost of enrollment altogether.
And the hits keep coming. The service was designed to speed up security by replacing manual ID checks at TSA queues with fingerprint and iris scan verification, yet CLEAR members have been increasingly subjected to random ID checks over the last year. And while a big upgrade to facial recognition technology will supposedly speed things up, that hasn't happened yet … in fact, the looming changeover has arguably made things worse.
The company's CEO, Caryn Seidman-Becker, admitted it herself earlier this year, telling investors: “In 2023, we did not consistently deliver the in-lane experience that our members have come to expect.”
There are still countless CLEAR success stories … but it has become incredibly hit or miss, with wait times that vary wildly based on what airport you're flying out of and when you're traveling. And even that begs the question: How did we get here? And as travel demand shows virtually no signs of stopping , how – and how soon – will CLEAR improve?
Lines Fueled By Amex & Airlines
CLEAR's core problem is simple: At many airports, more CLEAR® Plus members try to use the service than employees can handle. And you need only look past security checkpoints and into overcrowded airport lounges to see part of the reason why.
Lines regularly spill outside the doors of Delta Sky Clubs and Amex Centurion Lounges across the country as record numbers of travelers added pricey premium travel credit cards like *amex platinum* to their wallets to get in the door. The same thing has happened with CLEAR.
From that same Amex Platinum Card to *biz platinum* and a recent addition to Hilton's top-tier Aspire Card , Amex has added statement credits to more and more travel cards that cover the entire, $189-a-year cost of CLEAR enrollment. As cardholders have signed up for CLEAR in droves – might as well if it's “free,” right? – it has added fuel to the fire, overwhelming the company's capacity to keep queues moving smoothly.
It started in the summer of 2021, when the Amex Platinum Card bumped its annual fee up to $695 (see rates & fees ) while adding a ton of new perks … including the first-ever credit to cover the cost of a CLEAR membership: Just charge the now-$189 yearly fee to your Platinum Card and it kicks in to erase the charge altogether.
CLEAR didn't begin disclosing its ranks of paying CLEAR Plus members until recently. But the company said in recent financial filings that it had roughly 4.4 million active CLEAR Plus members as of the summer of 2022. Less than two years later, that had swelled to nearly 6.8 million as of late March 2024.
The company did not directly respond to a question from Thrifty Traveler about what percentage of their paying members are using Amex cards that cover the cost of the program. And the company insists its partnership with Amex isn't the major force driving those numbers up and up: Advertising and kiosks to register right at the airport are – and always have been – the largest source of sign-ups.
Airline partnerships add to the tally, too.
CLEAR has formed lucrative partnerships with some of the nation's biggest airlines to bring their flyers into the fold – including financial stakes from both Delta and United Airlines. Free members of either airline's mileage program get a small discount, while travelers with status or a co-branded credit card in their wallet can shave $40 off the annual fee. And the top-tier Delta Diamond Medallions and United 1K flyers get a CLEAR Plus membership for free as a perk.
More recently, CLEAR has also paired up with both Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines for similar offerings.
But it's undeniable that more travelers are picking up the cards that can get them CLEAR Plus for free. Thanks to eye-popping welcome bonuses of up to 175,000 points and an ever-increasing portfolio of travel perks, American Express has repeatedly told investors they're acquiring record numbers of new cardholders for premium products like the Platinum Card – especially among younger Millennials and Gen Zers.
“This quarter, we acquired 3.2 million new cards, with acquisitions of U.S. consumer Platinum card numbers again reaching a record high and increasing 20%, above last quarter’s record levels, demonstrating the great demand we’re seeing,” CEO Steve Squeri said back in the summer of 2022.
That trend will continue. In March, CLEAR re-signed another one-year extension of its relationship with American Express.
“I think that they continue to do a great job growing their card member base, and we get our fair share of that.” CLEAR President Ken Cornick said of American Express during a recent quarterly earnings call.
In a letter to shareholders looking back at 2023, CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker signaled that the company might have gone too far chasing after new members … at the expense of a smooth and consistent experience at the airport for their current subscribers.
“CLEAR’s 2023 financial performance and network expansion were strong but the CLEAR Plus member experience was not consistently up to our standards,” she wrote.
Signing Up in Line & ID Checks Slow Things Down
On paper, CLEAR has dedicated kiosks just inside the airport entry doors at many airports – a place where newbies can get signed up and travelers who registered online can finalize their enrollment with a photo and biometrics without bogging down the trip through security.
But in my experience – and I'm not alone here – those enrollment stations are rarely staffed. So through the main CLEAR security queue they go instead, slowing down lines for everyone as new users go through the four- to five-minute process of wrapping up their registration with a CLEAR representative.
That's what I was forced to do when I first signed up for CLEAR years ago, and that's what many travelers have to do today. As the ranks of travelers with CLEAR® Plus continue growing, it's a persistent problem.
CLEAR acknowledges that it's an issue, and one they've tried to solve over the years … with little to show for it. Despite their best efforts at getting new CLEAR applicants to wrap up their enrollment elsewhere, they still head straight for the CLEAR-branded security lanes regardless.
Luckily, CLEAR's partnership with the federal government to enroll travelers in TSA PreCheck won't exacerbate the issue. The company has confirmed that all TSA PreCheck enrollments – at 20-plus airports and counting – will take place away from the actually security queues.
The TSA threw another wrench in CLEAR's works last year, though.
The entire purpose of CLEAR is to cut you to the front of the TSA line, using biometrics to verify your identity and replace the need for a manual ID check by a TSA agent. But starting last summer, the company began ramping up random ID checks on travelers in the CLEAR lane at the federal government's behest. And paying members were justifiably angered when the TSA announced that it would eventually require everyone to present an ID – even after having their fingerprints scanned in the $189-a-year CLEAR lane.
Fortunately, the TSA backed away from its previous call for universal ID checks for all CLEAR® Plus members, the Washington Post reported last summer. Yet random ID checks are still par for the course – and seemingly far more frequent than just a few years ago. In Reddit threads , among our Thrifty Traveler Premium Facebook groups, and even from yours truly, it’s been a 50-50 chance of whether you can go through CLEAR checkpoints freely or get stopped for a secondary ID check.
‘NextGen' Facial Recognition is Making it Worse … For Now
To hear CLEAR say it, what they're working on will change everything.
There's a a new identity verification system on the backend, tied directly back to state and federal databases. More importantly for consumers, that will allow the company to install fancier and faster technology in CLEAR lanes, which will “eliminate the need for members to stop at a CLEAR pod” and “keep you moving through the CLEAR lane where you don't break your stride.”
That hasn't happened yet. But CLEAR promises its NextGen Identity+ and so-called “Lane of the Future” will launch at U.S. airports soon – later this year, the company says.
First things first: The company needed more information on CLEAR users to build up that new NextGen Identity+ verification system, which is why it sent an email out to all its members late last year. That process required another round of photos, another ID check, and additional personal details for each and every member. Yet again, that slowed things down in the security line: CLEAR ambassadors have to spend a few minutes upgrading each customer’s credentials rather than sending them through as normal
At last count, the company had finished that process for roughly 90% of active CLEAR Plus members.
“CLEAR is obsessed with the customer experience, which is why we upgraded millions of Members to NextGen Identity+,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
But exactly when truly touchless technology will replace the longtime “step up and scan your fingers or eyes” CLEAR kiosks is a moving target. The company says it's still on track to launch the new CLEAR lanes sometime this year, but it's staying tight-lipped about exactly when that might happen, what it might look like, or how fast it will roll out to its nearly 60 U.S. airports.
With a more automated process of identity verification, it could free up CLEAR ambassadors to handle the more time-consuming enrollments and other tasks. And in addition to being faster for paying members, it could also reduce the need for at least some of those pesky random ID checks – CLEAR is transmitting that data on each customer, anyway.
“In the future state … all members credentials will be transmitted to the TSA hardware. So there will be no need to show a physical ID,” Seidman-Becker, CLEAR's CEO, told investors late last year.
That's the goal, anyway. Whether CLEAR can make that a reality anytime soon – and if the TSA can expand its latest technology fast enough to accommodate it – is the $189 question travelers with CLEAR® Plus are surely asking themselves.
Bottom Line
CLEAR has been controversial for years, but the guessing game for travelers as to whether it will be a major time saver or a time suck has many CLEAR members at a breaking point.
While many flyers are no doubt happy as they waltz through security in minutes, paying nearly $200 a year for an unpredictable experience is a tough sell. CLEAR has big plans to make things better on tap for later this year. Only time will till when – and if – they make a real difference in the airport experience.
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