What happens if you don't wait for checked luggage at customs?
 

On my return to DCA, I have a 1 hour 15 minute connection which is legal. I am arriving from NRT and connecting at DFW.

I realize normally this should be fine.

I also have no choice but to check luggage but my schedule is tight and I really want to make my connection at DFW.

I will only have clothes in my carry-on.

If the NRT flight arrives late, and I realize that waiting for the luggage to appear on the belt and recheck will make me miss my connection, can I "forget" it and go to my connection.

This is not ethical but I don't mind a big delay in receiving my bag and I am not trying to circumvent any customs inspections.

Upon arrival in DCA, I could file a claim and to save AA any expense just tell them I will pick it up at DCA.

I could always say that it never appeared on the belt and I was told to fill out the claim at my final destination.

Again...not exactly on the up and up but possible and other problems I haven't thought about?

Some thoughts:

- There is usually not that long a wait for int'l baggage, if any, since you have to wait to get through Immigration inspection before you get to baggage claim.

- Depending on the size of your carry-on and length of stay, the Customs inspector may question your lack of luggage appropriate for your trip.

- You'll have to wait in whatever line there is to pass through Customs inspection anyway.

So, I don't think in most cases you'll save much time at all, probably less than 5 minutes.

The details of my story make it harder to judge your situation but I'll give you the anecdote anyways:

2 years ago right after New Years, flew SXM-MIA-DCA. Late flight SXM-MIA. MIA customs hall/baggage reclaim a mess as always. One bag (a box actually with used clothes from the beach) wasn't showing up. Without any AA personnel there, we decided to just leave it and buy new clothes later. We make it to the gate in time, board, take off, and 5 minutes later have to make an emergency landing back in MIA. At this point, my mother decides she doesn't want to fly. AA says that's fine but the bags are going to DC. We say fine, my dad is already in DC and he'll pick them up. The next day, we fly to ORD (our hometown) and skip DC. Dad drops the bags off at DCA with AA, who says they will ship them to ORD. We wait at bag claim for the bags. They don't come. AA has no record of any of them. Somehow, my mom is angry enough to convince the bag staff to let us personally search the backroom with all of the lost bags. No luck. As we are about to leave T3 at ORD, we see all 7 bags on the oversized belt, not moving, and tagged for the flight that we had waited for a few carosels away. The box was there too.

So after all the drama, we had indeed recovered all the bags including the one we left behind at MIA customs.

Good luck in making the connection and hopefully not having to deal with any of this!

The OP seems to be US citizen so with how many bags (if any at all) he comes bag is not the business of the authorities.

Worst case scenario file a claim at your final destination say you claimed it and rechecked the bag. Bag will turn up (hopefully) and they send it to you.

Good luck on your trip !

Thanks for the advice.

I hope it will be a non-issue but waiting for a bag of dirty clothes isn't worth missing my connection.

I will have a roller board and laptop bag as my carry-on so I won't be exiting customs without any luggage.

I accidentally did this about three years ago. Flight from LHR to BOS arrived late and I was so anxious to get to my connecting flight that I completely blanked on the fact that I had a checked a bag (b/c I rarely do so). By the time I got home, I had a call from AA stating they had the bag. It arrived at SJC the next day.

Do expect that customs will open the bag and look through it. Be sure to pack the underwear on top.

Keep in mind your bag is tagged to to your final destination. You are just picking it up, clearing customs with it, and handing it back to AA agents.

If you don't pick it up, AA will clear the belt after all the luggage has been sent out, put your luggage into a holding area, and at the end of the day clear all the bags through customs and then recheck them to flights the next day to their tagged destination.

I've been traveling internationally for 20 years and my experience has been very different from yours:

- Certainly if one has to wait a while to clear immigration, the wait for checked luggage should not be bad. But the vast majority of times I've been able to get through US immigration in a matter of minutes. The walk from the gate to the immigration hall is usually a lot longer.

- I never have had a customs inspector question the size of my luggage. On my last trip, earlier this month to London, the inspector at BOS must have seen me walk through the customs hall without stopping to retrieve checked luggage, and he asked me if I had all my bags I think more as a courtesy (there must be plenty of inexperienced travelers who are not familiar with the procedures) than out of suspicion.

- I never have waited in a customs inspection line in the US that was more than 60 seconds long.

Bottom line: it could be a 5 minute difference, as you suggest, or it could very well be a 20-30 minute difference. (BTW, I once did exactly what the OP proposes to do. Because of a delay, I had 30 minutes to make a connection to BOS from MIA. But I was fortunate that I had a companion who could claim and recheck my bag (her connection was later). I arrived at BOS and, knowing the odds that my bag made my flight were slim, left the airport and returned later that night and found my bag waiting for me.)

You must never have arrived at LAX Bradley terminal :D

+1, coupled with the fun of the DHS' computers being down, so unable to process us through immigration. That was a fun evening... :mad:

You bet I have! By the customs inspection line, I mean the line where those with nothing to declare hand in their completed customs form. The line typically is three seconds long, but sometimes can extend to 20 seconds.

I have done this by accident. I very rarely check a bag and had done so on return from a recent trip to France. In JFK I walked right out of customs and boarded my flight onwards to SFO. About a week later after unpacking and unable to find something I had purchased in France it hit me and I remembered I had checked in a bag and called AA. The bag had been sent to SFO and at this late in the game was sent to DFW for holding. It was sent out to SFO and arrived at my door the following day. Nothing was missing but I could tell the bag was searched.

The only thing I found odd was that AA did not contact me. The bag had an Admirals Club tag on it and that should have worked as some way to identify the owner and gain my contact info.

Then you've been lucky. The line for "Nothing to Declare" on my last couple trips was 10 minutes once and close to 30 minutes the other time. There is was a long line leading up to where you turn your customs form in, starting from the center of the hall where the agents take your form, going all the way to the right wall and snaking back and forth at least two full turns the half width of the hall. During the Asia rush when there are about four or five 744s from Asia and a couple European flights, the back up is substanial and the customs agents often stop the line as they question folks. In my conversations with CX and SQ reps this seems to be close to the norm.

+n

What a claim! (no customs waits longer than 60 sec!). I have been in many queues longer and more confused (with multiple "feeder" lines) than I care to remember.

Well, in this case n=0, cause when I post about what my experience has been, as I've done in this thread, what your experience has been is of no concern to me (although you clearly should feel free to share it). But in my experience, upon return to the US I get through both immigration and customs in 5 minutes or less more often than not.

(BTW, I've waited in plenty of long immigration and customs lines outside of the US. However, I am posting about my experience as a US citizen returning to the US. Also, as I always am in F or J, I am always at or near the front of the line, so my risk usually is limited to throngs arriving on other flights that precede mine. I've waited upwards of 45 minutes to clear immigration in BOS on occasion for that reason, but still the customs line was non-existent.)

Of course none of this really matters to the OP: how ever long it takes it will take. Once through immigration, however, he can asess whether it's worthwhile sticking around to retrieve his bag or just running for his connection. There certainly are times when the bags already are on the belt by the time you clear immigration.

I dont see where the problem is arguing about our experience with customs.

Personally I arrived in LAX at 3 different time a day and it ranges from no wait at all (early morning from Asia) to moderate (afternoon LH flight) to absolutely horrible (evening Flight on LX).

It obviously depends on the time you arrive and the respective combination of other flights arriving with you. Flights from Asia are the worst as most passengers require Visa and documentation, european flights are most often easy. But if a 747 from China is in front of you then good luck.

That said, I take LAX over ORD/IAD any day !

DH and I were returning from Barbados in mid-December. One of our bags was mis-routed and never arrived in Miami. We missed our connection to DFW waiting for it so we could clear Customs. Two AA agents told us we should have gone on to catch the connection - they would have taken sent the luggage on to us later. They said they frequently do this and Customs doesn't interfere but you don't know when the luggage will arrive home. You have to file a missing report (but only when you reach your final destination) which takes time but at least you can do it form your home airport.

BTW - our bag turned up 2 days later at JFK (I guess JFK and MIA look alot alike). It took another 36 hours for AA to deliver it us but it arrived intact and nothing was missing.

I'd feel more comfortable doing this heading home and after I carefully packed the luggage. I was very worried about some of our trip mementos, inexpensive but irreplaceable.

I would think the only thing to consider is if you will lie to the customs agent. I fly almost always with just a back pac and almost always especially at LAX get asked "is that all you have". At that point I would consider twice what to tell a federal employee?

I've forgotten to claim a bag once also and it arrived the next day intact so besides above I don't think there is a problem especially if the bag is not very important to you.

At least you were on the way home. I was on LAX-LHR as the first leg of a three week around the world trip, and my checked bag went to JFK instead. Luckily, JFK baggage put it on a LHR flight before I landed in LHR and it arrived only a few hours after I did.

Good point, although we're all trying to answer the OP's question, so all experiences are valid.

I've never seen a separate line at US Customs for those that have nothing to declare. In every situation I can remember, there was one line or set of lines for all travelers, regardless of amount of baggage or whether or not they had anything to declare. So, the fact that one has no baggage and nothing to declare has almost nothing to do with the amount they must wait at US Customs, as the wait is driven by who's in front of them. In the case of multiple lines, there is the "supermarket line" problem where you must pick a line, and whatever line you pick seems to go slower than the others, but this has nothing to do with Declare / Nothing to Declare.

I have seen the separate "Declaration / Nothing to Declare" or "Red Lane / Green Lane" concepts in other countries' Customs inspection, but not the US. Blumie, could you share with us which US airports you've been able to take advantage of a separate "Nothing to declare?" line at Customs?

It's no business of Immigration authorities, as the only thing they must determine to make an admission decision is whether the traveler is a US citizen (ignoring the other duties they have). But it most certainly is the business of Customs officials, which is what we're talking about in this thread. Imagine if you flew to London from the US for 2 days, and upon your return had 4 pieces of checked baggage, and declared on your Customs form that you had not acquired anything abroad. It would be more than suspicious that you had traveled from the US to London for 2 days with 4 pieces of checked bags, and the Customs official would at the very least want to see what was in the bags in order to determine that you weren't actually importing goods acquired abroad. This is but one example of why how many bags a US citizen has when entering the US is most definitely the business of the authorities.

Exactly, although I'm sure the customs/immigrations officials have 'seen it all' being in their positions.

I did a quick turn mileage run to NRT some years ago, upon arriving back to DFW the customs officer couldn't believe that I went to Japan for 4 hours, for miles, with only a briefcase. I was of course sent to secondary screening.

Um... remember one of ICE's initiatives a couple years back, "One face at the border"? The agents are supposed to be cross-trained to perform (and are expected to perform) all duties. So while you might not be suspicious from an immigration perspective, if you are suspicious from a customs perspective, they will direct you for further screening.

A roller bag and laptop bag should be more than sufficient to satisfy questions, other than a direct one like "is this all of your baggage?" We traveled for one month through seven countries with exactly that amount of baggage (nothing checked.)

Link to video of packing light method.

Guess they have never been to IAD either in the afternoon.

I have gone through customs probably over a 100 times--have never been questioned about a lack of luggage (usually I just do carry on). Last summer, my luggage missed the connection in BRU due to a baggage handlers strike. It showed up in TUL 3 days later. Obviously had been looked through, but had gone through customs all by itself!

My teenaged son did get hassled by customs coming back from Tahiti. I think they thought he was a drug smuggler since he was travelling alone (he had to come home because of school schedule). He only had a backpack, and they went through it VERY thoroughly.

Just what I was going to say!

This past December I routed NRT-DFW-LGA. I had a 1:45 connection and was rolled over on to 2 different flights. The issue was not baggage claim in DFW, it was immigration. If you are on AA0060, it gets in while 2 or 3 South American arrivals (which tend to be US citizen/resident heavy). We had to wait about 25 minutes to clear immigration. Once through all the bags were out on the belt. Customs was fairly a breeze (hint stay to the left). AA rebooked my on both next flights in succession. Not sure how many DCA routes by LGA was fairly pain free. Hope this helps ... and yes, go to the JL First Lounge (if you have status or an F ticket).