Originally Posted by
gotcha3
My question is this; does Newark offer downline flight rechecking (baggage and ticketing) in the customs/immigration, secured area?
Yes, but I doubt it will do you any good. UA isn’t going to tag your bag through to AA on a separate ticket. I don’t know that there is an AA agent in the recheck area — I don’t think AA has any international arrivals at EWR — so I suspect you’ll be schlepping your bags via the AirTrain anyway. That said, 3.5 hours is fine if things even approach being on-time.
Does anyone have any recent experience with clearing customs at EWR? I'm flying ORD <> EWR <> BER in a few weeks and wondering if a 2 hour connection time should be sufficient. I've had some really lengthy experiences at ORD customs in the last few months that would make that connection time potentially tight.
I assume you’re asking about the return leg? I’ve been through EWR twice this year, and while I typically try to avoid it, there were virtually no lines when I arrived. A 2-hour connection would have been fine. The problem, of course, is that it’s very unpredictable — if you’re the first widebody in your bank to land, you’re golden; if you’re the sixth, you’re going to have 1,000 people in line ahead of you.