It always seems to happen, you find a good service, become a customer, and then after it proves its worth, the service promptly goes under. I consider it lucky I didn’t sign up for that TEN year membership…In any case, Clear, the airport security screening accelerator ceased operations this week after it couldn’t secure terms from debt holders.
To put this bluntly, this sucks! Clear was one of the best things to happen to air travel in the post 9/11 world. You could whisk through security in 5 minutes or less with minimal hassle. Even though I have airline status, those lines are never as fast or efficient as Clear was. So long Clear, we hardly knew ya! Hope someone resurrects the concept.
Amen, brother!
I had to do a quick trip to San Jose yesterday, and I passed by the darkened Clear units as I hit the normal security line. It was a great service, and I’ll miss it as I travel in the future.
From a model standpoint, it was brilliant just that you could bypass the long line. If they’d stopped there, they would have won huge. However, they got too ambitious on the technology, and that probably blew their costs.
I think the cost model is completely wrong. For someone who used to fly a dozen times a year, it amounts to $15 or so to buy a possibly 20 minutes of time. If I arrive early, that a good drink at the airport bar.
http://www.nomadicminds.org/blogs/2008/02/29/fly-clear/
Sin-Yaw, your time is worth that money! Guess it’s all a matter of perspective…
I did the cost-benefit analysis in a similar way. I figured I’d hit an airport that supported Clear every third or fourth time I flew (esp since I had a heavy SJC/SFO weighting). An equal number of times I’m running late trying to get home because of meetings or traffic (esp in SJC/SFO), so the odds were good that a short security line was my path to making my flight. The saved couple hours or hotel reservation for a missed flight made up the cost.
Said theory was proven three times alone at SFO over the two years I had the service, by the way.