CLEAR

With airport security lines seemingly growing longer by the day, there are now also more options for shortening and simplifying that experience.

One is CLEAR, a system that confirms travelers’ identities not with physical identification cards but with fingerprints or retina scans. It shortens the process of going through airport security significantly, reducing the process to about a five-minute experience. What’s more, CLEAR ambassadors are on hand to help should you have any questions. Their friendly faces are a welcome change from the sometimes short-tempered TSA employees.

Several airports currently offer the experience as a free trial, so you can easily sign up in the airport and get your first month free. After the first month, the service is billed at $15 per month, so it may be a bit pricey if you travel infrequently.

One downside is CLEAR is not currently widely in use. Only select cities, including Denver (DEN), Atlanta (ATL) and Seattle (SEA), have it, and that limits its usefulness to some extent. Still, should the service become more widely available, it will certainly increase in value. If it’s available at an airport you travel through frequently, it’s a worthwhile investment to save time.