CLEAR is in 50-something airports in the U.S. Whether or not it’s a huge time saver really depends on who you ask, and what kind of experience they’ve had. If the person has TSA PreCheck, CLEAR membership generally only saves a minute or two (maybe not even that, if you’re at certain airports). But if if the person is not a PreCheck member, CLEAR can potentially chop off all the time off the TSA queues before reaching the officer who checks your ID/boarding pass. That can be several minutes, depending on the length of the queue.
In the past couple of years, CLEAR has also been slowly introducing reservation systems at select airports. It’s called CLEAR Reserve. You make an appointment X number of hours or days ahead of time, and when it’s “your time,” you can bypass the pre-security queue. It’s currently available in the U.S. in:
- Denver (DEN Reserve)
- Los Angeles (LAX Fast Lane)
- Minneapolis (MSP Reserve)
- New York (JFK Reserve)
- Newark (EWR) (Newark Reserve)
- Orlando (MCO Reserve)
- Phoenix (PHX Reserve)
- Seattle (SEA Spot Saver)
CLEAR membership is only open to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents 18 and older with a valid government-issued photo ID. CLEAR is also only available at select airports in the United States. However in March, 2022, CLEAR introduced its first reservation system outside the U.S. – Calgary Int’l Airport (YYC) is the first airport in Canada to use CLEAR Reserve (although CLEAR itself is not in use at YYC yet – only CLEAR Reserve is). It’s called YYC Express and includes free advanced reservations and onsite appointments at Security D for all departing passengers within D’s checkpoint hours on any airline.
YYC Express worked well enough that CLEAR continued to open CLEAR Reserve opportunities in other Canadian Airports:
- Edmonton (YEG Express)
- Halifax (YHZ Express)
- Montreal (YUL Express)
- Toronto (YYZ Express)
- Vancouver (YVR Express)
its international expansion and introduced the first European airport to introduce virtual queuing in August 2022. Located at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), it’s called BER Runway and was developed by Copenhagen Optimization and CLEAR. Best of all, just like the other reservation systems from CLEAR, it was free.
BER Runway was followed by other CLEAR Reserve’s introduction in other European airports:
- Amsterdam Schiphol
- Frankfurt (FRA SmartWay)
- Hannover
- Rome (QPass)
However although CLEAR Reserve was in the European Union, it hadn’t arrived in the United Kingdom. Until now.
Heathrow Timeslot began a 3-month pilot program, at Heathrow Airport (LHR) in London, on Wednesday, October 3rd. Like the 19 other airports that offer CLEAR Reserve, passengers can book appointments for Heathrow Timeslot as early as three days before a flight.
When I heard about Heathrow Timeslot, I wondered if anything happened to the “skip the queue” system LHR already has set in place with Fast Track (about 300+ airports around the world have had some sort of “skip the queue” system in place for years). Turns out LHR stopped offering Fast Track during Covid. Well hey, what better way to skip the line than with Heathrow Timeslot? AND, unlike Fast Track, it’s free. Yay free!
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