I arrived at Terminal A this morning to total chaos. It's obvious that the airport is overloaded just by observing all the aircraft that are parked remotely.

It took 60 minutes to clear immigration even though I was off my UA flight before the majority of passengers. Passengers were queued up around the upper concourse even before being able to take the escalators downstairs to the immigration hall.

Security officers were trying direct the passengers queued upstairs (en castellano), into different lines: US citizens, Argentines and transit passengers. Not very successfully I might add.

And of course some of the passengers don't help by not having filled in their immigration forms before approaching the immigration booths

I get nervous when I know that my luggage has been on the carousel for a long time unattended, especially since there were problems last week with "missing" luggage from the AR passengers that were stranded. Fortunately my LED HDTV was packed in a nondescript suitcase and was still on the carousel when I exited immigration.

One of the taxi dispatchers then tried to con me, quoting a fare (en castellano I might add) of ARS$285 to Palermo just as I was getting into a cab ... I made sure that he and the taxi driver that eventually took me were aware that I knew the scam that was being attempted. I had a few choice words and was exiting the cab before the driver apologized to me and quoted me the correct fare (in writing).

My flight was completely full this morning, with standby passengers not being fully accommodated at IAD.

John