Originally Posted by jmastron

To be clear, you were doing a *renewal* interview, i.e. your GE was previously/still valid, right? Thus, whether EOA was open or not, you would be able to use the GE kiosks and lane to enter. If EOA wasn't available you would still use GE to enter.

For someone enrolling for the first time, the EOA location and agents are generally in the same area (often the same agents), but you would NOT use the kiosk, and more importantly if EOA is not open/available you would not be able to use this expedited path at all, and would need to use the regular lines.

Unfortunately it seems like some of the airports and/or individual agents don't care for or aren't staffed properly for EOA (or don't have enough agents qualified?), and availability can be spotty even when it is supposed to be open (and sometimes those hours don't correspond to all the flights coming in). With the difficulty of getting regular appointments, it would seem better to funnel as many as possible to EOA but that doesn't always happen.