I returned from abroad yesterday to BOS for the first time in 2017 -- most of my trips abroad this year have seen me routed through EWR -- and when I got to the international arrivals hall I was crushed to see that CBP has merged the Mobile Passport queue with the regular line, separating it from GE. I asked several times to be sure I was reading the poorly-situated signs properly, and sure enough, each of the CBP booths was equipped with a phone scanner. The process took about half an hour, though fortunately they've also dispensed with the second, separate queue to hand in your customs paperwork, so that saved everyone a few minutes after retrieving our bags.

This change negated 90% of the time savings I've seen from using MP. To be fair, this is how I always expected it should work! I didn't have to use a kiosk, so I managed to get ahead of almost everyone else on my flight, saving roughly 10 minutes. But the days of giddily sweeping by everyone else, à la GE, are over at BOS.

Is this presumably a sign of things to come at other points of entry? The arrivals hall did look newly reconfigured.