Clear, part of New York-based Verified Identity Pass Inc. (VIP, get it?), which charged customers up to $199 a year for a faster approach to TSA security checkpoints, disappeared overnight. The Clear website now has just one page of short-and-to-the-point content:
At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement
with its senior creditor to continue operations.
The company's premise was that if Clear cleared your ID, you could fast-track directly to the screening area, which at most airports meant significantly shorter lines. The preclearing process included fingerprinting and iris scanning. Clear launched with great fanfare (and a $99 initial fee) on July 18, 2005, and sank with barely a bubble breaking the transportation industry surface less than four years later, having signed up 18 or 20 airports and at its peak reportedly had some 250,000 customers, which had shrunk to 150,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. Verified Identity Pass, a private company, was initially funded by Lockheed Martin, GE Security, Lehman Bros. and some venture-capital firms.
The concept was that frequent travelers or the terminally impatient (yes, that pun was intended) would happy pay to speed their way to the screening checkpoint, where they would still have to take off their shoes and belts, empty their pockets, remove their laptops from their cases and undergo the normal indignities of getting to their airline membership clubs or departure gates.
A perfect storm sank Clear. Travelers who fly enough to make Clear worthwhile also are elite members of one or more frequent-flyer programs that have their own shorter lines at many major airports. A number of airports themselves have worked hard to streamline security lines, and the TSA itself has instituted its black/blue/green ranking system right at the checkpoints in order to unclog back-ups of inexperience travelers or families that take longer to get through the Xray/metal-detector process. Many people begin their flights at smaller regional airports that don't have long lines to begin with. And now, of course, fewer people are flying, relieving pressure. The corollary is that financing is more difficult to obtain, which drove the final nail in Clear's coffin.
According to Danny Sullivan's posting on his blog, Daggle (which included the image above right), problems began surfacing when Clear started hustling for multi-year memberships. Sullivan, a search-engine wizard, wrote: "...I’ve been a regular user since it started. In fact, I was probably one of the program’s most successful affiliates. I’d written about it from an early point, and so many people used my code to get an extra month (and giving me one in the process) that my card was good through 2064. Poof. Now all that credit is apparently gone. And so is any time left on cards for people who bought the 2, 3, 5 or 10 year options that Clear recently promoted."
In an earlier post Sullivan had warned his readers, that "a 3 year or longer period is that Clear itself isn’t guaranteed to exist that long. So far, they seem to be expanding and doing well. They probably will be around for 3-5 years. But in 10 years, who knows how airport security is going to change — and $1,190 is a lot to gamble on that."
Do I miss Clear? Not for a minute. Unlike Sullivan, I wouldn't dream of paying for express-lane access to the TSA checkpoint. Now if I could manage to avoid that step altogether.....
The concept was that frequent travelers or the terminally impatient (yes, that pun was intended) would happy pay to speed their way to the screening checkpoint, where they would still have to take off their shoes and belts, empty their pockets, remove their laptops from their cases and undergo the normal indignities of getting to their airline membership clubs or departure gates.
A perfect storm sank Clear. Travelers who fly enough to make Clear worthwhile also are elite members of one or more frequent-flyer programs that have their own shorter lines at many major airports. A number of airports themselves have worked hard to streamline security lines, and the TSA itself has instituted its black/blue/green ranking system right at the checkpoints in order to unclog back-ups of inexperience travelers or families that take longer to get through the Xray/metal-detector process. Many people begin their flights at smaller regional airports that don't have long lines to begin with. And now, of course, fewer people are flying, relieving pressure. The corollary is that financing is more difficult to obtain, which drove the final nail in Clear's coffin.
According to Danny Sullivan's posting on his blog, Daggle (which included the image above right), problems began surfacing when Clear started hustling for multi-year memberships. Sullivan, a search-engine wizard, wrote: "...I’ve been a regular user since it started. In fact, I was probably one of the program’s most successful affiliates. I’d written about it from an early point, and so many people used my code to get an extra month (and giving me one in the process) that my card was good through 2064. Poof. Now all that credit is apparently gone. And so is any time left on cards for people who bought the 2, 3, 5 or 10 year options that Clear recently promoted."
In an earlier post Sullivan had warned his readers, that "a 3 year or longer period is that Clear itself isn’t guaranteed to exist that long. So far, they seem to be expanding and doing well. They probably will be around for 3-5 years. But in 10 years, who knows how airport security is going to change — and $1,190 is a lot to gamble on that."
Do I miss Clear? Not for a minute. Unlike Sullivan, I wouldn't dream of paying for express-lane access to the TSA checkpoint. Now if I could manage to avoid that step altogether.....
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder