nanneboy

Unfortunately, no Scandi countries are even eligible for global entry yet. Hopefully that will change in the future..

FlyingMoose

And? My math was for a single year, GE is valid for 5 years so 3 entries a year times 5 = 15. 100 / 15 = $6-7 USD per entry. I'm sure you know whether you have a criminal record before applying and avoid paying for a declined application. The background check in Europe is done by local Police so you can always start there. Most send you one for free if you're in doubt. The amount per entry is TOTALLY worth it.

FlyingMoose

Its not bound to a specific passport anymore, you can just update your passport details but you need to do a new interview after 5 years.

SK2751

I am more concerned about the time for interview and the annoying process than $. If it saves me 3 hours a year, I would like to spend way less than three hours on getting it (as there is also an extra cognitive cost of having another crappy membership to remember and renew).

(Aside the fact that my passport is not eligible.)

CPH-Flyer

My point exactly, Scandinavians are ineligible for GE. The Danish government did initially not want to allow it for privacy reasons. Don't know if that has actually changed. But either way, status remains the same: not applicable.

GUWonder

Swedish passports for kids were reduced to 3 years validity. Given how long it takes for some GE applicants to receive conditional approval, there is a chance that a Swedish passport used for applying would even expire before being able to use it to clear the “interview” needed for final approval.

If it weren’t for GE, I would miss a lot more flights after flying SK to the US. [I seem to end up having to do even more “self-connection” trips than before.] I wish GE wouldn’t be useful or needed; but as the US CBP keeps on making a mess of things, GE ends up being made more useful and needed than it should be.

nacho

Time + money, that the thing - and I'm sure it would take me more than 3 hours to find out.

Even if I am eligible, I would need to find a place to have the interview done. I have no idea if it has to be in the US or somewhere else.

I have such a varied experience with CBP. I was at IAH last month and I had to queue for more than 90 minutes to go through CBP, but when I was in LAX back in Dec 2021 we went through very quickly. It helps a lot to minimize queuing if the airport has a separate ESTA lane, because tons of people in front of me were to the US to land (saw them with a bunch of paper that do not look like flight tickets).

Anyone know if the US has stopped stamping our passports upon entrance for Danish passport holders?

oliver2002

There is a detailled section about trusted traveler topics on Flyertalk: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trusted-travelers-732/

Besides US citizens and LPR/Green Card holders, GE is only open to few countries who have reciprocal deals with the US, the list is here: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-t...l-arrangements

The registration, verification with the local police and the final interview will in total take less than 60 miniutes. If you are eligible. But you can read about in the forum above.

GUWonder

Interviews can often be done on arrival to the US, but it could mean waiting as long as 1-2.5 hours for the enrollment on arrival "interview" process that is done before exiting the international baggage hall on arrival to the US even as it's often much faster than that.

Even as a US citizen with GE, I have such a varied experience with CBP that even I am picky about doing international transits via the US. [And it's gotten worse with the Simplified (Biometric) Arrival thing that we are now doing for a much larger proportion of arrival passengers than even 12-18 months ago.]

The idea of flying via the US (or Canada) when able to fly from SAS hub airports via AMS, CDG or even Germany to get to international destinations beyond the US is something I suggest be minimized if it's not too costly in time and money (or mileage credit/debit) to do so.

FlyingMoose

The interviews can really only realistically be done on arrival. The scheduled options are completely random, usually really far out and in impossible locations like US/CA border stations in Minnesota that are an 8 hour drive from MSP.

If you do your homework and take a smart flight there are usually no queues. Sure you land at ORD or LAX at noon it will take time. You land at SFO at 5PM there is no queue. This is a non issue if you're smart about it.

And then of course it gives you TSA Pre which will save you copious amounts of time on domestic security.

nacho

TSA Pre isn't always better. We were at IAH and had no Pre, we saw that in the Pre queue they asked everyone to take their laptops out and shoes off, but not us. It happened to us once at other airports as well, once Mr had no Pre so we had to split. He got out much faster than us.

This is a bit like Marriott SNA, it's not that you are getting a suite upgrade but a chance to get a suite upgrade. Here you are buying a chance to get faster immigration and faster security - as there is no guarantee what the queue would be like. I think most of the time you get faster CBP processing, but it's not necessary like that all the time.

FlyingMoose

I find that in 99%+ of cases it is considerably faster. Many airports in the US also have multiple security check points and if you know those airports you pick the less crowded ones.

GUWonder

Even most GE users with PreCheck often don’t have a clue about “pick the less crowded ones”. And less crowded security checkpoints aren’t always the faster or better ones — something that even most frequent US flyers have no clue about unless sticking to a narrow set of airports and the same flight times a bunch.

And just because something worked out one way with PreCheck in connection with an international SK flight doesn’t mean it will work the same way even for the same flight at the same time at the same checkpoint with the same screeners the next week when again having a PreCheck boarding pass.

The US is not an ideal place to do international-to-international connections — and it’s one reason that SK loses some of my business to EU/Schengen area airlines with service allowing me to bypass the US and the increasing mess hitting me in GE lines as the US CBP gets ever more into the “Simplified (Biometrics” Arrival” process for most of those coming off SK flights in the US.

FlyingMoose

I still experience significantly more variability in the regular border crossing queues than in the GE queues. It does seem like we always have opposite experiences traveling...

Nevertheless, SK is absolutely losing a ton of my business as a result of their incredibly limited long haul operations to other EU airlines. Doing Int to Int in the US isn't ideal but rarely requires more than buffering a little time. It gets more tedious for the casual Swedish flyer that didn't book the TUI package and needs to specifically go get a Visa or ESTA for their once a year trip to Cancun through ORD or EWR.

GUWonder

GE definitely makes a big difference on arrival, just as you too experience.

But here is what I'm observing:

The variance with wait times to deal with the CBP passport control step is increasingly worse with GE for my TATL flights, while that for the "unwashed masses" crowd on SAS TATL flights is in a more steady state of remaining with much worse average wait times than GE but the variance in wait times for these "unwashed masses" being just about as bad as they were before CBP went with this Simplified (Biometric) Arrival stuff for so many US airports of entry for SAS TATL flights.

Even if things were different with wait times, I would still generally prefer to do an international transit in AMS, CDG or even Germany to get to a destination outside of the US than to transit the US to get to a non-US destination, but SAS can't realistically be expected to do anything about that.