FlyerTalker01565

Ah, you're American. This explains a lot.

GUWonder

As a US citizen waiting to use the U.S. citizen lines, I've had some waits in the 40-60 minute range at IAD, ORD, RDU, CLT, LAX and MIA -- speaking of experiences in the past ten years.

Since Global Entry and APC kiosks came increasingly on the scene, the wait times have been far, far lower for me. And they've been dropping for non-US persons too, as I've experienced since I'm often traveling with citizens of EU VWP countries not entitled to GE (and sometimes not even the APC) kiosk use.

WilcoRoger

Hear, hear!

GUWonder

If demand for US travel by VWP country nationals doesn't rise faster than anticipated by the government and IATA, then average processing times in the US should improve (even absent US CBP PreClearance expansion):

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24355363-post1.html

UltraRant

I'd personally really consider flying via ARN is the get US pre-border clearance in place. I've experienced it now a few times in Canada when on my way back to/via the US and it saves a LOT of time, time I'd otherwise spend in a mediocre lounge or simply at the gate when awaiting boarding.
Apparently some people here don't mind standing in line for an hour or so after a long flight. That's ok, but I have different hobbies. Especially when you're being sent in for a random additional check or when you arrive just after 3 747's have been offloaded it can be great fun to be there. Or when lunch time kicks in and suddenly half the available officers fly away from their booths. My experience in Canada is that such pre-clearance actually makes the whole process a breeze.

fassy

Like said before 100% agreed BUT I also agree the problem could and should be solved in the US by having a efficient immigration process.

Like extra lines for people with ESTA or similar visa waiver programs, lines for high risk countries (have you have waited behind a family of 10 from Syria at EWR or a bunch of "business men" from Ecuador in MIA?). Families with small children (or even more precise medium aged males with small children)... and yes for making my life at immigration easier I support racial/ethical/cultural profiling or whatever you call it nowadays to keep political correctness

I usually need just 3 minutes while those guys easily can block a couple of booths for hours without any movement :/

GUWonder

Who here doesn't mind standing in line for an hour or so after a long flight? The reference to that sounds like an example of wanting to knock down a fictional straw-man, but maybe I missed something.

Preclearance from Canada to the US is a mostly different beast than what ARN will get if ARN gets this facility -- the exception mostly being if you compare the early morning peak wait times at certain large Canadian airports' terminals with what will happen at ARN during summer. And if getting sent to secondary is the concern and you have checked baggage, CBP Preclearance can be more of a pain than non-CBP Preclearance routes.

For those with checked-in luggage and arriving at EWR, IAD, JFK, ORD or SFO without any long wait times for passport control/customs in the US, do you have fun waiting at baggage claim or the baggage office anyway? That probably won't change for the better and may even be made worse by this.

Even as someone with GE and checked luggage, I wait longer for bags when flying AC from the Schengen Zone to YYZ and into the US at EWR than I do when flying non-stop ARN/CPH-EWR. Not only do I have to wait for bag processing in a boring waiting area at YYZ, I also have to wait for the bag to arrive on the domestic bag belts.

It's become increasingly rare that any of my VWP ESTA-using Scandinavian relatives or other acquaintances have encountered an hour or longer line for US passport control. Even after a passport control line wait when even after the long wait they are still waiting for their bags to make it to the baggage belt.

The APC kiosks available for those with prior ESTA use history, the lines are no longer generally as bad as they used to be.

AUH went for this thing because it thought it would speed things up for its passengers. It made things messier during the peak periods, as there is no way to cheaply expand CBP head count overseas for these facilities' peak travel dates.

What the US should do and is doing is fixing things at US POEs in the US. That's a better use of resources than boosting costs by processing people and belongings overseas.

Even the Visitor lines are going to be segmented increasingly so, making things easier/faster for repeat VWP users. Will such segmentation come to ARN? Not in a way that will improve things overall for VWP users.

The US's CBP Preclearance expansion push at ARN is motivated not out of a desire to speed things up for visitors; it's done to slow down and stop people before they get to the US. There isn't even a conviction that it should speed up processing times.

FlyerTalker01565

Please in this thread take note: some of the anti-PreClearance is coming from people having US citizenship. I'd feel differently, too, if I got to take the 'Murican line upon arrival at EWR.

GUWonder

What difference does that make? Little to none, when I have to wait for my Scandinavian passport-using relatives and/or colleagues before I can leave the US airports.

As a U.S. citizen, I'm in a visitors lines on arrival at US airports at least once a month. And even when I'm not in such a line, I often still cannot leave the airports until the "visitors" in my travel party have gotten their bags.

UltraRant

@GUWonder: wow, that's a rant. I thought I was good at it, but I learned something here.

The thing you missed at your fictional straw man is a subtle hint of irony, I think.

The point we certainly agree upon is that the US should enlarge capacity and solve quite some issues at their POEs. That'd seriously help. I think having enough manpower to use existing infrastructure already would do a trick. Usually, for example, only 3 or 4 of 20 available booths are in use on IAD, indifferent of the length of the line. Put one extra officer in and you'd speed up immigration by 25 or 33%. Sometimes one of the immigration queue managers get smart and sends foreigners to the US line when it's empty. That also helps a bit. It's hard to find a smart immigration queue manager, though.

For luggage: I have just once in the last 12 months had to wait for my luggage. It usually is already even offloaded of the belt to make place for new flights and once I was so late that I had to go and pick it up at the lost luggage department. I missed a bunch of flight connections due to very slow immigration. My all time record is about 3 hours in the standard queue. Are you now convinced that the experience of getting in the US is different for non-US citizens?

I never had to wait more than 10 minutes in line when at a Canadian airport for pre-clearance and I've been on different airports during different times of the day. Many airports in Canada offer this service and it seems to work very well overall. I'd rather fly via Canada to the US than via the US to Canada.

I don't want to go in detail about pre-clearance in AUH as I haven't done that myself, but I have flown to and from that airport, so I hope we can agree that things there are completely different than in Europe or the USA? I think it isn't a good comparison.

GUWonder

If you think what I posted is a rant, then you don't know how much of an interested but dispassionate devil's advocate I am on these matters.

I am well aware of the differences in processing experiences between US citizens at US POEs and visitors at US POEs. For how couldn't I be when: at least once a month I'm in the visitors line myself; and even more often I have to otherwise wait for people in the visitor lines to clear too before I can leave the inspection facility and/or airport.

As a US citizen in the US citizen lines at US CBP PreClearance in Canada, I've been through with wait times of zero minutes to wait times of well over 60 minutes. And for my flights from Canada to the US that haven't included CBP Preclearance during these same FT years, I and my Scandinavian visitors have been through with passport control taking less time than to reclaim bags.

Ceteris paribus, flying from Schengen countries to Canada via the US is more of a hassle than flying from Schengen countries to the US via Canada; but I prefer flying to Canada without going via the US; and I prefer flying to the US without going via Canada. Whether or not I am using the US citizens line, the visitors line, GE, APC, Onestop, MP App, the diplomat line, or whatever.

UltraRant

This indeed explains quite a bit. Thanks for making this explicit.

gnaget

The cutoff time for check-in at YYZ is 90 minutes and you are advised to check-in 3 hours before a cross-border flight.

I would expect a 2 hour cutoff for economy passengers at ARN if they are checking bags. So that means most passengers will be there at 8 or even earlier, which will contribute to really bad queues during the morning peak.

GUWonder

Even if the cut-off at ARN only gets worse by 30 minutes for any given class of service -- and it definitely will get worse for say my UA ARN-EWR flights even when without checked bags -- that is an inconvenience that will hit on each and every trip ..... unlike the wait time and its variance in the US (which is improving and being targeted for much further improvements).

http://www.aviationnews.net/?do=headline&news_ID=241051

gnaget

I was thinking about some potential advantages in that the flight becomes domestic for arrivals. However, the US does not accept the passenger arriving from the EU as being "clean", which means that the aircraft cannot arrive as a domestic flight and allow the passengers to mix in the terminal when they walk off the plane. (I think the US should, but that's a different matter).

If you arrive at IAD, for example, it means that you still have to use the annoying mobile lounges and be driven to the main terminal and connecting passengers go through security and then have a long journey back to their gates.

At EWR I guess they need to create a special channel at the pier that SAS uses.

My only experience with Pre-clearance (except Canada where I guess they accept the security screening) was at PHL coming from Ireland on US Air. We arrived at the same terminal as the other flights and used a cordoned off area; have only a vague memory of this. We had to go through security again at the other terminal (they are all connected airside at PHL) for my domestic connection.