Who Replaces Clear Airport Security Service Remains Unclear

Future of registered travelers is unclear
Want to know whether the idea of paying to pre-clear frequent travelers’ trips through airport security is a great business idea? Launch it, file for bankruptcy, and watch the feeding frenzy for your company. Nearly four months after CLEAR, the company Americans paid as much as $200 a year to join, went belly-up, three companies are scrambling to buy its assets (read: customer database) and take its place.
According to reporters at the Orlando Sentinel, Orlando appears to be the big prize everyone is after. MCO is not only the first airport to offer the expedited security service, it has the most registered in the database Morgan Stanley is now babysitting. Clear operated in a total of 18 airports in the United States, including DC, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.
All places frequent fliers would prefer to go to the front of the line.
So why the four-month wait? It turns out, buying citizen’s security information that claims they’re not terrorists is a legal quagmire. For starters, the Transportation Security Administration had washed its hands on participation in 2008 — before Clear’s bankruptcy — because officials there had determined it wasn’t a terrorist-proof system, and went back to merely doing the same background checks it does for every single airborne passenger in America. Now the U.S. House of Representatives wants TSA to change its stance and get on board. The new TSA chief Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent who has also served as the LAX police department’s assistant chief, might do just that.
Second, Clear owed a lot of its partners money, and the airports are saying they want reimbursement before they’ll dive in again.

What's next?
But even without the federal background check component, plenty of flyers would pay to skip sharing security lines along with every family headed to and from Disney World, even though the special registered traveler lanes still require you to take off your shoes, pull out the laptop, and put the liquid bottles in a baggie. In fact, Henry Inc., one of the bidders for the service, claims 90 percent of Clear’s previous customers say they’ll resign, even if they aren’t reimbursed for the funds they lost when the first company collapsed.
And that’s no doubt why the companies fighting to revive this regsitered traveler idea are assuring Americans the program will be back, even if they can’t describe how.
Photography: courtesy .schill (Flickr), hyku (Flickr)
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