Originally Posted by WHBM
There are reports of some surprisingly significant airports in the US where overnight international flights arriving early have to sit with all the passengers on board until the customs officers turn up for work.
I've experienced this at JFK arriving from EZE at AA's terminal anyway. Flights get in from S. America early but all pax have to remain onboard until 6am when immigration/customs start work.
At least two airports that do close to air traffic movement are LHR (they boot you out too) and SYD as there are overnight flight curfews. The stack of flights from Asia that circle over the North Sea waiting to land has been referred to as the "1,000 bomber raid"