Ireland Run - Immigration?
 

I'm going on a mileage run to DUB from ORD and the return flight is two hours after I land in DUB. I've been to DUB before and normally the plane lands, you walk through and tell the immigration officer that you are there for either business or pleasure. Obviously this is going to be different. So here are a few quick bullet point questions:

1) Do I even have to go through immigration at DUB? Is there a rope I can duck under instead of going through immigration, since I just want to get over to the departure area for the flight back to ORD (which is probably the plane I just got off)?

2) If I do have to go through the immigration thing at DUB and he asks why I'm there, how do I explain the whole idea behind a mileage run? Do I simply say, "American offered me a lot of fringe benefits if I flew internationally this weekend?"

Any advice on how to handle the immigration folks, and exactly what to say, would be helpful. I would have done a search on this, but an international run is going to be new for me and I'm looking for specific answers about DUB. Thanks everybody.

Beach

You must clear immigration at DUB.

Immigration Officer: How long will you be in Ireland?
You: In Transit

Exactly what to say. That should take care of it.

Remember, always tell the truth. If the inspector presses you for details, explain about your MR. He might be surprised, but probably just shrug and let you through.

As the previous poster just noted, tell the truth. Just tell them you're doing it for the miles. Period. End of story.



Without meaning to stereotype, the Irish are, IMHO, incredibly hosptiable. The last time I did an MR to Ireland, the gate agents were simply sad that I wasn't going to get to see their beautiful country. They so wanted us (my fellow MR'ers and I) to experience Ireland, and were sad for us that we weren't. I assured them I had been before, loved it, and would go again, but that this time, it was just for the miles.

Just came back from a MR to DUB. Immigration was a complete non-event. The officer simply asked "how long will you be in Ireland?" I overnighted, so my answer was 1 day.

Also no issues coming back into ORD this afternoon when I stated I had been out of the country for one day.

When are you going? I need to ticket another one tonight and it would be nice to know if another FT'er is on the flight.

For US-DUB, at least on AA.com it is often possible to do sub-24 hour "stops" in London. It's a great way to get a last minute one-way deal from the US to Europe if needed (whether you go on from London or not means not oversleeping the next morning :eek: ).

Except of course that you must now conform to BAA's idiotic 1 small carryon rule. :(

BAA said to be relaxing rules on Jan 7
 

Allegedly this is supposed to be relaxed as of Jan 7, 08 according to this article on BBC.

completed a similar trip a couple of weeks ago. as previously mentioned, had to go through customs and immigration (was asked where i arrived from - ord, how long was my stay - a couple of hours, and where i was headed - ord), but received no strange look or response. then proceeded back to check-in and went to the lounge.

have fun

"Restrictions on the carrying of liquids will remain in place, as will limits on the size of hand luggage."

:( :td:

[QUOTE: 1) Do I even have to go through immigration at DUB? Is there a rope I can duck under instead of going through immigration, since I just want to get over to the departure area for the flight back to ORD (which is probably the plane I just got off)?]

Just for future reference -- in case you weren't being facetious -- circumventing the security flow at any airport is highly frowned upon by heavily armed (and in the case of TSA, badly trained) people.

TSA is armed?? :confused:

Thankfully that is far from true.

No, TSA is not armed. But CBP officers are--they are sworn LEOs who carry firearms. Remember, until you clear passport control and customs, you technically are not in the USA, so you don't have rights under US law. No right to an attorney, you can be held without being charged with a crime, etc.

I definitely would not advise trying to circumvent any arrival procedures.

I did the same thing with SNN last summer (used it to fast-forward my plat challenge). The Immigration officer was quite surprised when I said, "1 day"... and I explained the MR concept to him. He literally wrote-in "1 day" on my passport stamp. No biggie. The cool thing about having a 24 hr stop is that you get the same crew on the return flight. When he saw me the next day, the purser seemed almost as surprised as the Immigration officer had been.