6 Months Free CLEAR Membership
Via Frugal Travel Guy, seems CLEAR is offering a6 months free membership to Visa Signature Cardholders!
If you are not familiar with CLEAR, it is basically like Global Entry / TSA Pre-Check in that you can go thru expedited security. However unlike TSA Pre-Check, it can be used for any Airline!
TSA Pre-Check as of right now is limited to United, American, Delta, and recently Virgin America. More airlines like Southwest and Jet Blue are expected to join the program later in 2013.
That being said, I still HIGHLY RECOMMEND getting Global Entry, because it is only $100 for 5 years and with it you get TSA Pre-Check, which means you can clear security in less than 15 seconds (not even a joke, I timed myself last week at O’Hare). More info here.
However, as someone who flies Southwest a lot, it is really annoying that Southwest doesn’t currently participate in TSA Pre-Check. If I also had CLEAR, then I would be able to do expedited security even while flying on Southwest.
While TSA Pre-Check has been expanded to most major US Airports, the one MAJOR downfall of CLEAR is that it currently is only at 5 US Airports…
So great news if you are based out of
- Denver – DEN
- San Francisco – SFO
- Orlando – MCO
- Dallas – DFW
- Westchester – HPN
If are based anywhere else, then CLEAR might not be as useful unless you are visiting any of the above cities in the next 6 months. I might be visiting San Francisco in August, so I might sign up for CLEAR depending on how long enrollment takes.
If you do sign up, just remember to set yourself an alert on your phone or Google Calendar to cancel before the 6 months are up. In the terms, it says they will remind you, but who knows if that is true!
Recap
While Global Entry / TSA Pre-Check are certainly the gold standard when it comes to expedited security (and really an example where the Government got it right for once), it unfortunately hasn’t been rolled out to all airlines yet. So it can kind of suck if you aren’t flying a legacy carrier because you have to wait in the regular security line.
That being said, if you are based out of the above 5 cities or have plans to travel thru them, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to sign up for CLEAR since it is free for 6 months.
If you already have TSA Pre-Check and live in the above cities, CLEAR is basically a safety net in case you scan your boarding pass and are denied TSA Pre-Check, then you could always then hit up CLEAR.
-Parag
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Beware, though. CLEAR immediately charged me the FULL yearly fee ($179) when I signed up under this promotion. When I wrote them to complain, they then refunded $60, but didn't give me my first 6 months free. When I called them up to ask WTF, they explained that I wasn't eligible for free months, since I had had a CLEAR membership in the past :\
Not very up-front and helpful, those CLEAR folks :\
TSA Pre-Check also works on Alaska Airlines… they were the first alrline it worked with in Seattle (not surprisingly).
Watch out at DFW I believe it is only functional in the UA terminal which is much less busy than the other terminals where AA flies out of.