Interesting experience with DTW CBP this afternoon. Happened just as DL 630 from NGO deplaned at 12.00. First to fail were the GE machines. GEs were then told to fill in a customs form and go to CBT GE/air crew line where we waited for some time.

After trying to reboot their systems and failing to fix the problem, CBP went to some other backup system which also was extremely slow. Appears some agents passwords did not work on the backup systems. Finally the CBP agent I was dealing with just wrote down my details (I am GE) and said he would enter them later.

In fairness, CBP did all they could to expedite GEs.

Not again? This has happened to me, except GE wasn't sent to any special or faster line. To make it worse, one had to "learn by doing" that the GE machines were down; there was no announcement.

I could only imagine what it would have been like to be a foreigner (other than a Canadian which can use US queues) at that time...

JFK T4 was a madhouse this afternoon.

Not sure how much of that was related, but kiosks were down when I walked up.

There was a desk on the left processing GE. And within 5-10 mins they were rebooting the kiosks and one worked for me.

Must've been a systemwide problem.

And agreed. CBP was professional and helpful. ^

And what does this have to do with Delta?

Well...

DTW is a hub, so lot's of DL flyers affected.

JFK T4 is DL's flagship terminal improvement project for the year in the "focus" city they are trying to "win," with blah blah thousands of DL pax passing through every week. So lots of DL flyers affected.

Takes a real stretch of the imagination, huh?

I am sure that it cost Delta plenty of money with missed connections, etc.

I have experienced this at DTW as well. GE or no, I waited for about 90 min in the regular line with 2 small kids while CBP agents told us you'll get nothing and like it. Lovely people.

So if this happened at DFW = AA's problem?
ORD = AA and UA?
PHX = US?
JFK = everyone?

Sure it becomes the airlines problem at a hub airport. But who caused this mess to cause problems for the hub airline? I blame Bush for this mess!

Well, CBP IT did get more "complicated" at around and following this time in 2001, with DL (and NW) big time into doing anything and everything the government wanted done in the name of "security" without making much of any stink about that. DL has never really gone to bat in a serious way against the CBP for slowing things down with the face and fingerprint scan of visitors. The greater the demand on IT resources, the more likely a failure. Some might say it is too bad that the US airlines don't do much of anything to try to make immigration and customs in the US more closely mirror what happens when arriving into the EU Schengen area and doing immigration and customs there.

Sure, DL is now willing to allocate some resources for APC to speed things up for US citizens (especially at JFK T4), but that's a little too little and late.

These CBP IT problems can happen at any airport. About 4 years ago, I faced a similar situation at IAH around 4:00pm. The systems stopped working for an hour and CBP totally stopped processing passengers during that period. One can imagine the immigration lines at IAH at that time of the day when an hour passes without them processing anyone through.

3 years ago, I faced a similar situation at DFW. GE's where told to pass to the end of the normal line. Not very clever. Having said that, they seemed to get the system up and running in about 30 minutes.

What's APC?

In 2007 a problem with CPB local computer network stranded 17,000 passengers at LAX. The US is a bit of a reserve roach motel. No outgoing CBP. Passengers can leave with just an airline employee looking at the passport, but good luck getting in.

Could be Napa, California but that doesn't really fit well into the sentence. Guess we will all have to wait for the big reveal.

APC Customs Services?