Clear ceases operations
:: Monday, June 22nd, 2009 @ 10:53:35 pm
:: Tags: Travel
At 9:36pm, I got an email stating that Clear lanes would no longer be available as of 11:00pm. 84 minutes of notice! That’s pretty impressive. I’m glad my year’s membership was almost up (early August termination).
Clear to Cease Operations
Dear Eric Cheng,
At 11:00 p.m. PST today, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.
After today, Clear lanes will be unavailable.
Sincerely,
Clear Customer SupportVerified Identity Pass
600 Third Avenue
10th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Journal RSS 
…wow…let’s see, they were the only private company, yes? Always sad to see that happen. How did you like the service? –markb
Service was weird. At SFO, there was no dedicated line once you got through the Clear biometric identification stuff, so an employee would walk you to the front of some line. Made me feel like an asshole.
Sorry you had a couple of months that went down the drain, but I’m glad they’re gone. There should be a scaling back of security theater rather than profiting off of security theater. The more there is the latter, the less likely there will be the former.
Joel spolsky didn’t think too much of Clear:
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/23.html