Try taking a scuba diving trip for a week some time with just carry on.

Yup. Or mountain biking..or climbing...or backpacking...or carrying a sleeping bag (even the smallest ones just take up too much room).

Lot of good reasons to have to check a bag.

Or business, unless you want to wear the same suit for a week--the one you just wore on a 8-12 hour int'l flight.

Yeah, better wandering around baggage claim than standing in line.

Also, I've found at IAD that as slow as the baggage is, it still beats you out of the immigration line if you don't have GE.

I just had my interview at JFK. Lots of availability on the schedule. It was more of an explanation of how to use the system than an interview really. A few questions. When I gave the agent my passport they looked at it and laughed and said "this is going to save you a lot of stamps" since my extra pages are filling up. Done very easily and the CBP people were very friendly and helpful. I'm looking forward to using it. I have 3 or 4 international trips left this year.

time from application to conditional approval?
 

Anyone have recent experience of how long it takes to receive conditional approval these days? And does this depend on how much/where you've traveled in the past?

Thanks.

Mine was pretty quick, probably less than two weeks if I remember correctly. I had been to a lot of countries in Europe, , north Asia, SE Asia, and some in Africa.

I wonder whether he'll have a shot at reapplying when the divorce is final

Global Entry Laugh
 

I was on UA 890 from NRT-LAX the other day. Huge lines everywhere no one at the kiosks. Got my printout and headed out. Luckily I only had a carry on so I did not have to wait for any luggage. Walked up to the customs guy who was sitting there and he looks around and sees no one anywhere that got off the plane. He asks "Are you a crew memeber?" No why would you ask that? "Well, there is no one else here from your flight?" I hand him the little print out and out the door I go.

If there is any doubt that GE is worth it, this episode proves it.

I still bounce back to my first flight after GE enrollment. Flew home NRT-IAD on UA, which lands smack in the middle of the Asia evening bank at IAD (on my arrival date, 12 flights landed within an hour). The main Customs hall was packed, all the way back to the moon buggy drop-offs. From the time the flight landed until I was actually on the outbound Dulles Access Road was 17 minutes.

No availability in Boston until November??
 

Just looking for possible interview slots---most sites have slots starting within a week, but Boston appears to be blacked out for all of October. Anyone know what this is about? Have a trip coming up before November and it would be great to have GE in time for that. I guess the alternative is to fly to JFK but that seems like a lot of hassle....

My experience was pretty good. Applied on Sep 20, got conditional approbal on Sep 30, I happened to be traveling through Houston next day, Oct 1st and scored an appointment with just 18 hours in advance. I just came out of the appoitment with the nicest CBP officer I have ever had a chance to talk.

20 min interview, that was mostly explainimg me the system and watching the intro video. Great experience so far. I'm looking forward to start skipping those passport lines!

Thanks. I ended up getting the conditional approval in about 6 days, but there are no local interview slots for a full month! I have international travel before that, but not heading through any other GE interview cities, so I'm stuck. Can't figure our why Boston has no slots until November since all the others appear to :(

I obtained my Global Entry approval nearly a year ago. I had my first trip to secondary interview at immigration without having declared something. I did not even get to the second screen at the GE kiosk and the slip with the big X printed. Foolishly thinking that I should do what I was told during my GE interview to do when this should happen, and go to the closest window to the GE exit, I was told to go back to the regular lines.

Fortunately, the lines were still short. It was a bit disappointing to be fibbed to by the agent at the immigration line who told me that there was a fingerprint problem, I replied that this was interesting because the machine said all the prints were fine. Then I heard that they were having a problem with "that" kiosk. Agent one leads me to the secondary intereview room and my guess is that I was the sole US citizen in that room judging by what I saw and heard.

About 20 minutes or so later, I was called to a booth in the secondary room and Agent 2 told me that as a GE member, I was subject to random pullouts of the line. I told him that I was aware of that fact because I was told that during my interview. He went through the customs form questions, stamped the back of my big X'd receipt from the kiosk with the CBP stamp and told me to show the form at the exit of immigration.

Foolishly again I thought I could rely on what Agent 2 said, wrong. At customs exit at baggage claim, I was asked why I had not filled out a paper customs form, I told him that I had just been told by Agent 2 that the CBP stamp the back of my GE receipt was sufficient and was told by Agent 3 that if I ever got bounced again I should fill out a paper form.

Despite the obvious lack of truthfulness of the first CBP agent and the 20 minute delay, the rest of the CPB crew that I dealt with was courteous. (You would think that Agent 1 just could have said that I had been bounced to secondary randomly, rather than tell the whopper about the fingerprint scans.) I do not and did not today do anything that might jeopardize my GE registration, and I guess that I was due for a random stop. The good news is that all of the others who were in secondary when I arrived were still waiting when I was allowed to leave, at least I had some priority for my status to be resolved. Bags were so delayed that my bag still had not arrived when I got to the carousel before customs.

So here is a data point for a ramdom stop of a GE registrant.

Wasn't there a report somewhere, maybe even in this thread, that if you got a truly "random" X/secondary receipt (meaning that you had NOT declared anything that routinely would generate an X), you could simply go to a different kiosk, go through the process again, and get a normal reciept?

(IIRC, the example was about malfunctioning fingerprint readers....if the kiosk has trouble reading your fingerprints, it might spit out an X after a minute or so. But if you go to another kiosk, try again, and it works that time, you can avoid the X treatment.)

I had a problem one time with my fingerprint scan and got the "X". However, when I went to the CBP agent at the nearest line, the agent had no idea it was the fingerprints that caused the "X" and in fact asked me if I knew what the problem was. So, yes, Agent one wasn't exactly being truthful. When I exited Customs, the agent just took a look at the receipt and waved me through. I think your experience stems from poor training on the part of the agents. BTW, which airport was this?