George S. May Business Blog

Bon Voyage: Clear. No more skipping airport security lines.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Clear, the biggest company running the “Registered Traveler” program will shut down operations as of 11pm PST this evening. Their parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc., issued a statement this morning in which it explained that they were “unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor”. All Clear users were forwarded the statement this morning by email.

For those unfamiliar with Verified Identity Pass’ Clear’s program, it was created to help travelers zip through the long lines at airport security checkpoints. In a nutshell, if you were willing to pay $199 yearly and have your fingerprints and iris images scanned you could become preapproved to move through your own line.

Verified Identity Pass’ Clear service was actually pretty popular. For instance, Clear was used 250,000 times in Washington, DC airports alone. Overall, Clear said, over 2.5 million people were processed using Clear. Verified Identity Pass operated security lanes at 20 U.S. airports: Albany, Atlanta, Boston’s Logan, Cincinnati, Denver, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, LaGuardia, Little Rock, New York JFK, Newark, Oakland, Orlando, Reno, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Jose, Washington, D.C.’s Reagan and Dulles, and Westchester.

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