Originally Posted by
DCBob
(EDITED)
You are talking about the "moon buggies," right? If so, you are correct. There are two routes to go through immigration, customs, and security arriving from an overseas flight. One is to walk (or in some cases, take a moon buggy) to the Midfield Terminal immigration facility and the other is to take the moon buggy to the Main Terminal. What I meant to say was to choose NOT to go through security in the Midfield Terminal (C-gates) or in the IAB in the Main Terminal (after customs) but to bypass the long security lines for connecting flights and use TSA pre-check instead. If you see the regular security lines are short, you can just disregard this alternative. The Metropolitan Washington Airports website states:
We have two U.S. Customs and Border Protection locations: The International Arrivals Building (IAB) in the Main Terminal and a Transfer facility in the C-Gates.
Realize this only works if you don't have checked luggage, or if your luggage is short-checked to IAD (e.g., IAD is the final destination listed on the luggage tag), because if the airline makes use of the mid-field customs facility under the C-gates for connecting passengers, the bags are delivered to the two international baggage claim areas depending on how they are tagged. Connecting baggage gets sent to the mid-field concourse, while baggage destined for IAD gets sent to the Main Terminal.
If you were to go to the Main Terminal but your bags were tagged through to your final destination that is not IAD, they will be stranded at the mid-field concourse baggage claim. I'm sure UA has a procedure to deal with this, because I imagine there are at least one or two passengers who make this mistake on a daily basis (and one or two bags daily that get sent to the wrong baggage claim...), but I definitely wouldn't expect your checked bags to arrive at the same time as you do at your final destination.