Originally Posted by
WilcoRoger
Jeez, "only in America" the land of botched half solutions. No wonder you'll still get a receipt and still have to talk with CBP agents - automated...
But hey, this is the country where cheques are still not in the museums
As another data point, last week returning to SYD (where US GE members are allowed to use the genuinely automated SmartGate system) I observed four flight crew (maybe United or AA) in the adjacent line. One of the women had missed going to the kiosk (of which there are several between the last Duty Free and the Customs area) to get a ticket, so when she got the machine she was flummoxed. There was a lot of loud discussion among the four of them, with one of the others eventually saying "Are you GE? You have to go back there to a kiosk and get a ticket." And he held her place in line until she got back.
Not a big drama (there were a lot of SmartGate lines and the others were moving quickly) but it was clear that the whole "automated" aspect was confusing to the Americans.
