Originally Posted by
ljwobker
Does "walking out with the sticker" equate to "being able to use the machine"? Seems like walking up to a machine that doesn't know who I am won't help me. ;-) Or is the sticker enough to at the very least get me to the front of the line even if the machine doesn't know who I am?
Also, I'm planning on scheduling the interview during a 4hr layover at EWR next week... does anyone know what happens if you miss a scheduled interview? While I certainly plan on padding the arrival->interview schedule by a good bit, it's always possible that my inbound is cancelled or very heavily delayed... and I don't want to risk getting red-flagged.
I was in an even more precarious situation for my interview about 3 weeks ago in IAH. Not realizing that I would get Conditional Approval so quickly, I had scheduled on my airline ticket, a connection from JAN-IAH-LAX that didn't allow for enough time to interview in IAH. (I, like you, was heading outbound intl from the USA.) And since it was a Sunday flight, IAH was--unusually--open for interviews but LAX was not. Decided I wanted to use GE on my next re-entry back into the USA, so really wanted to schedule an interview in IAH before leaving the country, as I live outside the USA and didn't have any other great options. I ended up gambling, scheduling the interview and praying I could get on standby at an earlier flight. It was hairy, but it worked out.
My Plan B, if I could
not have made the standby flight and thus the interview, was to CALL the IAH office for CBP/GE from my originating airport, and cancel out about 2-3 hours ahead of time. So, keep the EWR number handy in case you have irregular ops and can't make it. CBP surely has had this happen to prospective interviewees before. I don't think they'd hold it against you as long as you notified them and promised to reschedule the interview. BTW I'm looking forward to using GE for the 1st time at LAX in a couple of weeks.
