RDU rolls out new way to skip long TSA lines – The Business Journals
This is behind a paywall, but it’s talking about Clear’s EnVe Pods rolling out at RDU. I hadn’t even heard about these until now, but basically it speeds up authentication of travelers 5x by using facial recognition instead of eyes or fingers. It makes sense, but it still isn’t enough to get me to sign up.
Breeze Airways navigates headwinds, turns first quarterly profit – Travel Weekly
Breeze has made some money! Sort of. I’ll have more to say about this.
Looking for something to do this weekend? The Air Show has been back from the holidays for TWO weeks now. Come have a listen. First up was a look at Spirit’s current… troubles. Second was more of a rapid fire Q&A where Brian lobbed all kinds of questions at me. He, in turn, talked about Delta’s Sphere party.
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2 comments on “Cranky on the Web: Breeze Improves, Does EnVe Matter?”
From the BizJournal, a synopsis:
RDU is now one of 25 airports nationwide to offer what’s called EnVe Pods — a biometric, “face-first” technology offered by New York firm Clear Secure, a company that offers paid members a way to quickly move through TSA checkpoints.
EnVe stands for enrollment and verification. The device works without scanning eyes or taking fingerprints. Instead, it utilizes a high-resolution wide-angled camera.
Clear costs about $200 per year.
As for EnVe, Clear’s plan is to take the technology nationwide — or at least to all 58 airports in the Clear Plus network. It’s now available at airports such as Austin-Bergstrom International, Denver International and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Clear is also a revenue stream for the airport. It operates as a concessionaire and shares a portion of its receipts with host airports and airlines via revenue share fees.
While Clear has lanes in both terminals at RDU, the EnVe technology is debuting only at Terminal 2.
Here’s the thing. Clear is lying. It works more slowly.