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Originally Posted by
spursnut
We're visiting the US on honeymoon in July (San Francisco, Hawaii, New York)
Our first stop will be Chicago where we'll connect to SFO.
We're flying American Airlines, so presumably a large percentage of the flight will be Americans?
Do you think this might reduce the amount of time it takes us to get through immigration, in that most of the flight won't be foreign nationals?
No guarantee whatsoever of this. I flew CDG-JFK on American last week, and more pax went to the non-US passport line (though NY may be a bit more cosmopolitan than Chicago). Bear in mind too that your flight is unlikely to be the only intl. flight arriving at any given time.
We've a three-hour wait before the SFO flight but hope we won't be waiting too long at immigration. My last visit to the US in 2005 (MIA) took forever to get through.
I should be 'on the system' in terms of the fingerprint control thing but my wife-to-be has never been to the States before.
Any thoughts?
Can't opine there, as I've only been through the US resident line (and shuddered to see the fingerprint apparatus, but those comments are for OMNI/PR).
Do remember that you will have to collect your baggage and go through customs, then recheck your bag through to SFO, , take the shuttle train to your domestic connection, and then reclear security. If you want to eliminate one queue you could travel with carry-ons only.
I would think that three hours would be enough but anything can happen. I landed at ORD (on United) in early December on a Sat. afternoon. A slight delay had shrunk my 1h40 connection time to about 1h20. I made my connection but only because of planning, hustle, and luck, as you can read about
here.