miklcct

Please note that, in here, foreign country means a country where you have no legal right to enter and subject to immigration control, for example, any EU/EEA citizen entering any EU/EEA country or Russia / Belarus citizens entering both Russia or Belarus is not considered entering foreign country.

My fastest experience of entering a foreign country by flight is:

less than 10 minutes from door opening to exiting the airside, arriving at the concourse

That was done on the first day of Easter, taking an evening flight to Helsinki (Finland), with an HKSAR passport. The passport control area was completely empty when we arrived. I didn't have any checked luggage because I was staying for only 1.5 days.

Loren Pechtel

Well, it wasn't a flight, but how about zero seconds?

Crossing from East Berlin to West Berlin--there was no line, they saw our US passports and simply waved us through. (Our stuff was still in our hotel room in West Berlin, we had just taken a day trip to the east.)

Randyk47

YadiMolina

GYE, hands down. First off the plane, first to immigration, and first out of customs. They have some passport scanning kiosks for customs, stick in your passport, get a green light, go. Barely slowed down, probably 5 minutes.

On the other hand, leaving there included a 90 min chaotic queue for immigration and the departures hall.

84fiero

My luck hasn't been as good as others. In my mind I have ~30 minutes as my "baseline" quickest - though I can't recall where. Longest in recent memory was ATH which took just over an hour - wasn't all that busy but only 2 booths open and seemed to be an inordinate number of passengers who had (I assume) some sort of issues that took longer to get cleared.

catocony

Back in the 90s, I rarely stopped walking when going through German or Dutch immigration with a US passport. You held up the passport, the immigration guy gave you a nod and wave, and that was it. I was in the Sheraton at FRA sitting down to breakfast within minutes of getting off the plane. With a regular 5-6 hour layover heading out to the Gulf, I could actually get a meal and 3-4 hours of sleep in my day room before heading back to the terminal.

My fastest in the last few years was Zurich, where there was no line heading into the Schengen side for a connecting flight. I think it took about 90 seconds to clear Swiss immigration.

BigFlyer

Are you saying the DDR border control waved you through with US passports? That was never my experience, they would always look and stamp. they had to make sure you didn't overstay and that you didn't lend your passport to a DDR citizen.

chrisl137

He said East to West. The west didn't recognize that there was more than one Berlin and didn't treat it as a border crossing.

I did the crossing a few times. It was a few minutes West to East, and no time East to West.

(ETA: I now realize you're referring to the exit procedure from the East, as opposed to the entry into the West. I wouldn't count the exit procedure from where you're leaving as the time to enter a new country. But I think both times I did it, it wasn't anything more than walk through the line that moved as fast as you could walk, throw your extra money in the bucket and get a stamp. I think we barely had to slow down when I did it.)

I think most flights to Canada and Europe the entry time has been dominated by the time to walk from the gate to customs, often with little short lines and only a few questions at customs.

Flying into Greenland from Iceland we got off the plane, collected our baggage (pretty quick off a DASH 8), and walked outside to get into the cabs. No border control to be seen.

schrodingerdog

Less than 20 sec

In a flight from UK they connected us to the Schengen part of the terminal instead of the non-Schengen one, and when they realised, more than 75% was already out. As I was sitting in row 1, it took me 20 sec to walk through the jet bridge into the terminal and therefore the country.

:D!

Less than a minute at GIB, before I became a British citizen.

Everyone else was in the British/EU/EEA queue, so I went straight to the front of the non-EU queue after a few seconds walking off the flight to the immigration checkpoint (there are no airbridges and there's usually only one flight arriving at a time), "how long are you staying?" "1 day" stamp! Then a few seconds to walk out of the terminal.

While Greenland is not part of the Schengen area, it is part of the Nordic Passport Union and in any case flights from the Schengen area generally do not go through border control.

https://naalakkersuisut.gl//en/About...n-and-Tourists

Loren Pechtel

No--the West Berlin officials waved us through. They could see the East German officials scrutinize our documents, the fact that the East let us out made it obvious our passports were ours.

BigFlyer

I can see how you might have thought you were waved through for the reasons you stated - but, in fact, there was no passport control entering West Berlin from East Ber!in. The allies did not recognize the establishment of the border preventing free travel between the various sectors , and checking passports would have been a recognition of that border. You could even take a subway from Friederichstrasse in East Berlin to the West and the West Berlin police would not even know you were entering.

The East German airline, Interflug, made money flying in Sri Lankans to East Berlin and then taking them on a bus to West Berlin. They could then stay illegally in West Berlin or take a domestic flight to West Germany.

Kamalaasaa

aquamarinesteph

Rome. My first trip to Europe.

I think it took longer to open my passport to the correct page than it did for the official to look at the pages and stamp one of them.

GUWonder