Clear launches new expedited ID check pilot at Atlanta airport

Atlanta’s Clear+ members are the first to get a taste of the future of airport security checkpoints, as envisioned by the biometric identification technology firm.

Starting this week at the Lower North checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Clear+ members will be able to scan their boarding pass and be verified via facial recognition before heading straight to physical bag screening.

With these so-called “e-gates,” there will be no more need to stop at a Transportation Security Administration agent before going to the metal detectors, Clear says.

That two-step process that includes TSA verification will happen within Clear’s own machines.

While the company has been testing the e-gate machinery elsewhere, Atlanta is the first airport to see the new streamlined process go live.

It promises to be a “safer and more frictionless experience,” Kyle McLaughlin, Clear’s executive vice president of aviation and travel, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview.

The e-gates come after an issue that had required additional TSA ID checks of Clear members in recent years, though a company spokesperson said the issues were not related.

Back in 2023 Clear faced Congressional scrutiny for allowing several unauthorized passengers through security. The company blamed it on employees — not its technology. TSA in response ramped up its ID check oversight of Clear passengers.

Meanwhile, TSA has expanded its own use of facial recognition for more efficient ID checks for all travelers.

A Clear+ trusted traveler membership costs $209 annually.

The Atlanta pilot program will be followed by a launch at Washington Reagan National Airport next week and more than 30 other cities over the next six months — with a focus on World Cup host cities.

In Atlanta, the company plans to assess the Lower North pilot before expanding the e-gates to its South PreCheck and international terminal lanes.

Ultimately, Clear says the technology will roll out throughout its national network.

It has been several years in the making but “accelerated over the past few months” with the new administration, he said.

After ending the shoe-removal rule at main security, the Trump administration last month announced it is seeking “innovative private sector solutions to enhance security and improve the passenger experience at TSA checkpoints.”

McLaughlin told the AJC that Clear has been on a “technology innovation road map for the last year and a half.”

The e-gate technology will reduce the time that passengers have to wait in line, he predicted. The face scan takes about a second and a half.

In 2023 and 2024 the company upgraded all 7 million Clear+ members to a new digital ID standard involving both biometric enrollment and verification of the identification document directly with the issuer like a DMV.

That is what “allows us to take that and transmit your identity digitally, either to the TSA system, as we do in airports today, or to integrate it directly into this e-gate technology,” McLaughlin said.

It will also free up Clear’s staff to do less ferrying of passengers, and more “hospitality” as well as more of Clear’s TSA PreCheck enrollment work, he said.

When Clear brought the idea to Atlanta airport leadership and new general manager Ricky Smith, McLaughlin said, the team was on board. “They said, ‘Bring it here. We want to do it in Atlanta,’” he said.