Fly Clear
Tuesday Jan 15, 2008
As many frequent travels may have noticed there is a new company, Clear. that is providing a registered travel program that is supposed to expedite you through security.
Hyatt has recently entered into a sponsorship with Clear and offered all Sun employees a one year membership in the program. I am fortunate enough to have a Clear office in the Hyatt about 5 minutes from my house. Several of the people I work with asked me to let them know how the whole process went since I was going to be the first one to go through it.
There was a Clear booth in the lobby of the hotel. There where 4 people working the booth. One was the supervisor, one was the technical expert for the kiosks , and two where "concierges", to help you through the registration process.
The kiosks are a windows based computer, with a passport scanner, driver license scanner, a finger print scanner, finger print reader, optical scanner and a digital camera.
The process began by the first concierge logging into the system with a username and her index finger on the fingerprint reader. She pulled up my pre-registration account and verified the information on my passport and license. At this point the second concierge had to come over, login with his username and fingerprint and verify my license and passport again.
Once through the verification process we started the documentation process. First you have to put the fingers of your left hand on the fingerprint scanner. A green light goes on for the fingers that are reading. It was actually a little challenging getting all 4 finger lights to go green. Next the right fingers, followed by both thumbs at the same time. Once your finger prints are scanned in, you move to testing them with the finger print reader. I passed with flying colors.
You then move onto the optical scanner. The device is made by Panasonic. There is essentially a very small mirror in the middle with a glowing green circle. The lady asked me to stare at until it became like an optical illusion. At first I was like, WHAT?! Then a realized she meant until they spilt into two circles. I did this and put the circles right on my pupils in the mirror. This led to a successful scan on the first try. They where all amazed. I guess I was the first person that they had worked with who got the eye scan on the first shot. Again my advise is to get each of the green circles on your pupil in the mirror.
With my iris scan in, they took a digital picture of me. They told me I would receive my card within 14 working days. The whole process took 15 minutes.
Update 01/22/08
I have received an email from Fly Clear saying that I am clear! I should have my card in 14 days.
Update 01/25/08
The mail man brought me my card today. Perfect timing. I don't know if the lanes are open in Denver yet, but I will definitely get to use it on the way home.
Update 01/27/08
I arrived at DIA an hour before my flight. Security lines on Sunday night are normally pretty long. Also Frontier, who I normally fly, leaves from A concourse. This is the international concourse and if British Airways or Lufthansa has their big bird here for the international flight, you are literally adding a couple of hundred extra people to the mix.
The security line was at 30 minutes. No worries I had plenty of time. As I am walking up to the line I notice a lady with a blue scarf on. I ask if she is from clear and she says yes. A brief conversation about how I thought they where not open yet and she said they are not official open, but that they are doing dry runs and if I had my card we could go for it. I handed her my clear card, and she proceeded to plow through the line to the front of of security to the clear kiosks. Note to clear, a separate lane to the front, would be much appreciated. Don't know how many looks we got. Once at the clear kiosk, she asked me to put my card in. It then asked me for my finger print. No eye scan. Bummer, I was hoping for the Star Trek side of it. Once I was verified she handed me a bin and asked me to put my computer and liquids in. She then guided me through TSA and right to the front of the metal detector line. I was through security in less than 5 minutes! Very happy with the experience.
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Posted by house fly on January 14, 2008 at 07:33 PM PST #