When Verified Identity Pass abruptly folded last June, notice of the company's demise came in the form of an alert on its website that began, "Clear lanes are no longer available." Now, that same URL lands on a page that claims, "Clear is back and under new ownership." The new owner is Alclear, and today the firm said it acquired out of bankruptcy the assets of the once dominant, but now defunct Registered Traveler provider with plans to relaunch the Clear program at airports this fall.
Alclear said it expects to begin enrolling new customers this summer with plans to charge $179 per year for membership in the program that promises to speed vetted members through airport security. When Clear launched, it charged $99, but that price made several jumps, settling on $199 by the time of its closing. On the Clear website, Alclear said it remains in discussions with "multiple airports to re-introduce the Clear service," though none were disclosed.
Though it said it would not offer cash refunds to former members, New York City-based Alclear said it would honor membership terms for nearly 160,000 former Registered Traveler participants.
The bankruptcy judge favored such plans, ordering that former members who give permission to remain in the program "receive the service without cost for a number of months equal to the number of months that remain on the transferred customer's original membership agreement contract."
Under the terms of the bankruptcy court judge's order, the buyer would have to give former Clear members 30 days to opt out of any relaunched Registered Traveler program, in which case their biometric data would be destroyed. "Any customer who does not respond by the denial deadline will be deemed to have consented to the transfer of the customer data to the buyer," court documents said.
When Alclear in late January inked an agreement to buy the bankrupt Registered Traveler provider for nearly $6 million, it originally envisioned relaunching the program before the end of May, but a longer than anticipated bankruptcy proceeding stalled those efforts
(BTNonline, April 2). VIP last summer abruptly halted operations of its Clear program, prompting competitors to follow suit. VIP in December filed for Chapter 11 protection to expedite an auction sale.