Originally Posted by Tiki
I put this in the NYC forum but since it deals with AA's terminal 9 in JFK, maybe it should be asked here?
We will be arriving in JFK on a Thursday morning in Aug next year from GRU at 6am. One US, one Australian passport. How long do you think it would take to clear immigration & customs? How much time would we save if we don't have checked bags? I have been known to wear three pairs of jeans just to get my carry on small enough to carry on, then put the other two back in the backpack after we get on the plane!
So if anyone has done this route, what is best case scenario and worst case for getting through?
immigration is before bag claim, so you save no time there with carryon. checked bags do have to be put back in on exiting customs, but that's not normally a huge delayer.
the resident and alien/visitor lines are separate, though it can be hard to tell when the line backs up into the corridor from the hall. no sense in pushing ahead for the citizen line if your companion is stuck in the alien one...
if you're the earliest big plane arriving, and you're in biz or first, you should breeze through immigration, wait for bags (will be your biggest wait in this case), then breeze through customs and recheck. if you're fifth in arriving, forget it---- plan on being quite a long while at immigration alone.