SFO Immigration Shut Down For IT Problems
 

Landed from UA 858. Passport control lines extend all the way to the end of the immigration hallway. Since I've landed, it's been down. :20 mins and counting.

Update 1: :30 mins and counting. No announcements, other than what is spreading by passengers from the beginning of the line. Wonder if CBP has a backup plan in cases like this?

Update 2: they just announced that the system has been down since 8:00 am and they are "working on the backup plan." Wow, a backup plan that still isn't in place 3 hours later...

Update 3: About 11:15(?) or so, the systems sprang to life and things began to move again.

Has anyone been in a precedent for this?

I was picking up my folks at LAX coming in from LHR. The immigration computers were down and both of us were stuck waiting 4 hours, them inside the arrivals hall and me out in the car. The breakdown made the local news.

The flySFO twitter account says the systems are online now and that they've been providing water to pax and upping the custodial services to keep lavs clean.

That's gotta be a rough way to finish a long-haul flight.

This happened to me about a year ago at SFO. It was before I had GE and I was out of the hallway and in the main hall just before the immigration officers. We waited two hours, nothing moved. The line went all the way down the main hall to the last gate. Must have been several thousand people in line. At least I was near the front and had no connection that day.

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I might have missed it, but was GE not working as well?

Nothing was working in my case. All lanes were dead.

The was exactly my experience today. I've never seen that hallway so full of people. Reminded me of LAX! :D

Correct, nothing was working. When the systems came back up, the GE terminals were the first indication we had. With no one standing there doing anything to them, they just suddenly beeped, the screens flashed, and within two seconds, Boom! They were booted and ready for business. Even those that didn't have GE cheered!

I suffered a similar CBP computer malfunction on arrival at GUM several years ago. After waiting in line for hours in sauna conditions, I was very fortunate to be skipped ahead by an airline manager (not even the one I was flying with to/from GUM) because I would have missed my connection (despite it being several hours long transit).

It seems CBP is incapable of manually processing more than a 2-3 passengers an hour per officer.

they should establish some quick-processing method to manually process arrivals in case the systems go down.......

In the post-9/11 world, I don't think they can do paper processing anymore. CBP officers need to run queries in the computer to make sure they catch individuals who have outstanding warrants or other red flags in one of the many national and international databases that are networked together.

I was thinking that they could use LogMeIn or a similar system to run the searches remotely at another facility that has functioning connections to the databases.

There must be some way to process manually or semi-manually. In my GUM experience I was processed through immigration before the systems came back on.

Hellish greeting for incoming pax at SFO today
 

The computers at CBP went down for a few hours on Saturday morning, just in time to trap all the pax from Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc. in the arrivals hall. Fortunately my MEX flight beat the rush, but still ...

At one point they handed out I-94 forms to all the folks in the visitors line, but these turned out not to be needed. Folks with "A" visas - ie foreign diplomats, government types - got pulled from the line for special handling.

Not sure if these things happen often, but it's pretty embarrassing esp. in SFO - the world's technology capital.

Oh yeah, is the weather at SFO never NOT lousy?

:confused::confused::confused:

Silicon Valley ≠ San Francisco

Well, OK ... But San Francisco does have Twitter and AirBnB and god knows what else, and SFO is the first port of call for tech folks from Asia.

And all of this is a UA issue how? Shouldn't this be in the San Francisco forum?

Already discussed in TBuzz.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...-new-post.html

If you want to pick nits, SFO ≠ San Francisco. They're not even in the same county.

Passengers Sick, Fainting After SFO Computer Glitch Creates Huge Delays

True. According to the OP, the airport is "the world's technology capital."

Airport computer woes delay international travelers

Yes - I'm sure that's what the OP meant. :rolleyes:

That's what he said. @:-)

Actually, SFO is more "San Francisco" than San Francisco. Its 100% owned by the City and County of San Francisco, and is for policing and administrative purposes controlled by SFO. Things like the San Mateo Building Code, and code enforcement, don't apply. The Airport is in unincorporated San Mateo County, and I can't think of anything that San Mateo controls or really even has a say in.

Has been this way since the city bought the land from Mills in the 30s.

San Mateo County Sheriff has investigative jurisdiction there.

http://www.smcsheriff.com/divisions/...tions-division

The San Mateo County Coroner also has jurisdiction there.

Not if it's a network issue preventing their computers from connecting to anything.

I don't get why they couldn't have at least let US passport holders in. US citizens can't be refused entry anyways. So a few people with outstanding warrants might slip through the cracks. Anyone on any terror watch lists is probably on the no fly list anyways and wouldn't be traveling.

A couple years ago, I was entering at ORD from Germany when they had a big mess, with four to six hour lines, Fortunately for me, the GE kiosks were working, and I got through instantly, although it seemed funny to walk past long lines of people who had been sitting in the hallways for hours.

I also experienced an CBP meltdown at DTW when I was on a late flight from Asia. They set up a makeshift fast track system for those with tight connections. However, DL didn't handle this very well: their long GA welcome speech omitted the most important information, namely that the CBP computers were all down, including GE, and even the person doing the fast track triage seemed unaware that the GE kiosks were also dead. It was also frustrating that crew from the previous flight were in the fast track lane, which might have caused some paying passengers to miiss their connections; arriving uniformed long haul international crew would not have been assigned to work flights the same day and IMO should have given priority to customers, including elites who had paid for premium cabin tickets.

This wasn't an issue with SFO's technology, it was an issue with CBP's technology.

Not so. There are believed to be over 1 million identities in the TIDE, but less than 100,000 of those on the NFL.

So,what is the point of API, if all the checking is done as you enter?

You are confusing two different things. One is people who are not allowed to fly to and from US airports and/or barred from entering the US, and the other is people who are allowed to fly and to enter the US but who receive extra scrutiny when they do (inspections of their luggage, questions about their itinerary, checking of their credentials, etc.).

You might argue that the need to give extra scrutiny to those latter people could be waived when the computer systems go down, without much impact. See how far that argument gets you with bureaucrats who will be blamed in the event of a security problem, but are unaccountable for mere delays.

The other role for advance passenger information is that sometimes there could be a passenger of such interest that they are not denied passage but an individualized response is prepared for that passenger when they arrive. I don't know how often that happens but I would guess it's not zero.

But the best way, again, to understand these systems is that they proliferate because the people deploying them have not much incentive to increase the convenience to passengers (particularly noncitizens/nonresidents). Take money out of their budget every time there's a delay, and you'd see very different results.

Two hour delay into SFO?

If you live there, that's just a morning commute...:D

Kudos to OP for removing rant from Post.

I agree, just let everyone in! ^

In fact, this should be SOP. Open borders! :cool:

I live there, and the one thing I can say for it is that getting to SFO itself is super easy. I can do it in less than 10 minutes, every time. Of course, if you're coming from Marin or the East Bay or San Jose then you're looking at a lot more congestion.

A ridiculous anarchist statement.

:td::td:

No thanks, I'd prefer to wait. That's a security nightmare.