Submitted by thebusiness7 t3_10gjvgt in jerseycity
I’m wondering if CLEAR membership is worth it if I’m mainly using it at the mentioned airports. I’ve seen the CLEAR line at EWR unstaffed on a few occasions, and I was wondering how often that happens or if it’s just for early flights.
Edit: also, what’s been your average time to pass through TSA when you have CLEAR at EWR? I’m estimating like 15 mins max since it’s a shortened line?
Is it still $179 a year? I had the free trial of it a while back and decided not to renew. The occasions I had to use it, the regular TSA lines weren’t that long (this was mostly at JFK). If you fly a lot and have the money I guess it might be worth it. Ymmv
If you can make united silver cost comes down to $109. Plus $60 for any three friends so you could even resell that. Plus some credit cards cover $180 per year so you can end up making money.
I love CLEAR. I've never waited more than 5ish minutes to get through security when using it at local airports (most recently at EWR in October).
How long did the TSA take after that though, like maybe 10 mins? I’m just trying to figure out what the average amount of time is that I should budget for.
We would have missed a flight last year without it. The airport was super busy and we were able to skip a massive line.
I usually arrive an hour prior to departure just to be safe.
Always 2 here…
10 - 20 minutes. Clear + tsa pre-check. It depends a little on how crowded the airport is. I've never had it take more than 20 minutes and rarely less than 10. United will also pay the clear fee for 1k members.
It's worth it.
Yep, worth it, especially if you also have TSA Pre-check. Just choose the shortest line when approaching security.
I once spent 45 minutes in the precheck line at EWR so I enrolled in CLEAR for my next flight. I can only speak for the CLEAR/Precheck combo - I would say average time to get through is 7 minutes. Not sure about the timing for those with CLEAR but no Precheck.
That said, CLEAR is progressively getting more popular and on a few occasions in the last month, it seemed to be faster to just go through Precheck (or Premier Access if you have that option). Specifically on Christmas Eve, the CLEAR line was down to the AirTrain hallway.
Clear also ran that idiotic “give your friends the gift of Clear” promo over the holiday season where members could gift Clear access to their friends and family for 1 trip, it led to a bunch of inexperienced travelers bogging down the lines from Thanksgiving—New Years, I ended up just going through the normal Pre Check line to save time.
Whenever I use pre check the only delays are waiting for the CLEAR folks to cut the pre check line.
It's worth it at busy airports like EWR, ATL (especially Atlanta where even the Precheck line is super long) and LAX. The only issue I've run into is that at FLL the TSA Precheck line isn't open late a lot of times.
Ah okay, “late” as in like after 8pm?
Yea. I've had some late evening or night flights out of there where Precheck was closed altogether. But that's really the only airport that I've noticed that.
Washington DCA does the same thing! Super annoying. The last time I transmitted through there, it was closed by 6 or 7. Way too early.
Nope. Just get Precheck, CLEAR really only works at certain airports with single mega lines where the ID check is out of control, like Orlando or Atlanta.
It's also a Delta product so often only found at airports with a large Delta presence.
I have CLEAR and have only ever used it once. It’s free to me, so I keep it active, but I really don’t care all that much for the product. I find that TSA Pre Check is perfect for my needs and the airports I frequent. I seldom wait more than five minutes to reach the TSA agent, though I know some people (my partner being one) have been faced with situations where not having CLEAR would have meant missing a flight due to unexpected crazy lines because of TSA dealing with staff shortages.
Precheck + Clear = best combo.
Everytime I am at the airport, I breeze right through security. It also helps that my credit card reimbursed me for the membership cost for both TSA Precheck & Clear.
mooseLimbsCatLicks t1_j535b6u wrote
It’s worth it especially if the airport is busy. If it’s not you don’t save that much time. But even just bypassing that huge line once is worth it in my opinion.