Ah, memories of flying through PIT (and PHL and CLT) as one of Stephen Wolf's cockroachs.
Originally Posted by
sunpass
There was once such a system in place when PIT was a US Air hub. Passengers arriving into PIT on an international flight would do this:
1) go through immigration
2) pick up baggage
3) go through customs (declare or nothing to declare)
4. recheck their baggage at U.S. Air desk located just after customs. They would have to recheck baggage whether they were continuing on a connecting U.S. Air flight or had Pittsburgh as their final destination.
5. all passengers would then have to go through security screening to enter the airside terminal.
6. passengers with Pittsburgh as their final destination or making a connecting flight on another airline would have to then take the train to landside to claim their bags.
In very similar form, though there was tweaking around point 5, SEA was also like this until the new international arrival facility opened. IIRC, wasn't ATL similarly like this until the international terminal fully opened?