After being stuck in line at EWR last Friday (Aug 13th) behind a bunch of lost non-citizens in US Citizens lane and waiting for over 30 minutes I must have looked pissed off and flustered because when the CBP immigration officer processed me, she flipped through my passport and said:

"You know, it looks like you travel a lot, you might want to look into the Global Entry program - it lets you bypass the line."

Well, last I saw something about Global Entry I thought it was a trial program in one or two airports but I looked at the flier she handed me and there it was, in *all* the airports I travel through!

I applied online through GOES the next day, August 14th (Saturday) and I had a conditional approval in my email Wednesday morning August 18th (Wednesday). I was in Boston at that time but there were no appointments available the next day (Thu) when I'd be going to Logan to fly back to SFO and I'd be landing at SFO too late to go to an appointment.

So my interview appointment got scheduled for first thing August 23rd (Monday). All went smoothly and I have my sticker basically a week after applying! I applied for NEXUS at the same time as I travel to Canada quite frequently as well, but I didn't want to risk delay of NEXUS->GE to save $100 as I'm off to Japan and then Europe and I wanted to make sure that I had GlobalEntry before I leave more than I wanted to save $100!

I read *all* of this entire thread and I want to thank everyone for sharing their experiences. I am currently composing an email to all my traveling colleagues and encouraging every one of them to apply (sadly for a couple of them who are not US citizens or permanent residents it won't help).

Just as a point of amusement, at the same time I had my appointment another gentleman had his appointment with the other CBP officer in the SFO Global Entry office and when I heard him say something about "mileage run" I just *knew* he was someone from here so I said hi and we exchanged a few words. Nice to see the word spreading!