>Airports are not helpless. In 2014 Dallas-Forth Worth airport in Texas paid for extra automatic passport gates to slash queue sizes. And airlines around the world often pay a small sum per passenger to speed business-class customers through special passport-control lanes. Many governments would gladly shift the cost of passport checks. Too gladly, reckon some airports, who fear the entire bill for passport control may eventually be dumped on them.
We've got TSA holding the nation's airports hostage back in 2015 by slowing EVERYTHING down in order to get more funding. Many airports/airlines now offering "expedited security" as part of their "pay for the oxygen on the plane" price plans, this on top of CLEAR/PreCheck. So now TSA knows they can do that, if they don't get the funding from the gov they'll just leverage schemes to get it from airlines/airports, as the article indicates.
I remember as a kid, my parents scrounged together enough cash for disneyland tickets, the flights there, and some nights at a motel. There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free. I can't go full grumpy old man mode cause I'm only 27, but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.
> There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free. I can't go full grumpy old man mode cause I'm only 27, but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.
As much as I lament the cattle-car nature of modern air travel, it's worth pointing out that the food was never "free", it was just rolled into the price of the ticket. On an inflation adjusted basis, the average flight costs about 30% less now than it did in 1995[0]. Some of that is surely more efficient planes and logistics, but some of that is the airlines charging only the people who want an $8 cheese and cracker pack, rather than giving everyone a salisbury steak. It's a sad fact, but a lot of people buy their tickets based on the list price rather than a holistic assessment of value, which means that the airlines cut corners on service to get the list price as low as possible.
The problem is that you don't have an equal comparison of what you get for that price and airlines have been doing this for a long time.
They used to refuse to show the price of the flight with tax and fuel until the government forced them to. Now they're trying to play the same game with seat assignments, your carry on, and checked bags.
Why shouldn’t those who travel without checked luggage should get some kind of discount?
They don’t tie up the check-in line, requiring the presence of the agents and bag handlers, they do not require the labor of the baggage handler on the other end of the trip and anywhere in the interim. Fuel cost savings are likely minimal, but labor costs at the airports can add up fast.
> We've got TSA holding the nation's airports hostage back in 2015 by slowing EVERYTHING down in order to get more funding. Many airports/airlines now offering "expedited security" as part of their "pay for the oxygen on the plane" price plans, this on top of CLEAR/PreCheck. So now TSA knows they can do that, if they don't get the funding from the gov they'll just leverage schemes to get it from airlines/airports, as the article indicates.
Let's just be entirely clear: TSA is completely separate from passport control, in terms of how it's structured and funded. Both are not-fun experiences[0], but the article is about passport and border control, not airport security.
> Many governments would gladly shift the cost of passport checks. Too gladly, reckon some airports, who fear the entire bill for passport control may eventually be dumped on them.
I actually would probably be in support of having these costs passed on to airports. Airports (and airlines) are in a much better position to lobby for overall improvements in the passport control experience than passengers are. As noted in this article, their incentives align very well with passengers' incentives: the more painful passport control is, the fewer international flights, which means less business for them.
[0] and trust me, I know this better than most....
> I actually would probably be in support of having these costs passed on to airports
What I am confused by is that my international tickets already have several fees and taxes that go to the US government (not the airline or airport), amount to a fair bit per person, and in theory are to cover all this security and processing. Isn't this ~$20 per person enough?
I really wish they had big signs at "security" checks saying "You paid $8 for this".
A lot of the old perks on airplanes were due to price controls imposed on them pre-privatization. They weren't allowed to compete for customers by lowering prices, so they spent money on unnecessary quality improvements in an attempt to compete for customers.
It's the exact inverse of one of the problems with rent control. Under rent control, landlords aren't allowed to raise prices to pay for capital improvements that renters are willing to pay a premium for; with airline ticket price floors, airlines weren't allowed to slash prices, so they added perks that flyers would prefer not to pay for.
> but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.
I'm not sure how much of the outside world you have experience, but I can tell you categorically it's already much, much worse to be poor in the USA than any other developed country.
Poorer people in the USA are desperate, it's no wonder there's so much crime and so many people in prison compared to other developed countries.
> There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free
Are you allowed to take your own food on the plane in the USA?
When the airline doesn't give me free food, I'll often just pack my own. It's usually nicer than what they'd give me anyway. I'd rather a nice homemade bacon and egg sandwich than the shit they serve you on a plane.
Departing from New Zealand I've never had an issue bringing my own meal. Obviously I can't bring something to drink, but I can buy something after security.
The one that annoys me more than food is charging for luggage. Especially since some airlines will add a luggage fee for every leg of the trip, which can add up to be very expensive.
You definitely can bring your own food — except I guess maybe not something yogurt that's a "gel"? That's what I do and it's always better than what they're serving, as long as you don't mind it not being hot.
I just made a special meal request, at the bottom of the page:
> If you can't find a suitable meal from the options we offer, you're welcome to bring your own food. Please ensure it doesn't require heating or refrigeration. Also remember to plan your meal around the security screening restrictions on liquids, pastes and gels.
You're allowed to bring an amount for "consumption during your trip". I've brought fast food from outside and eaten it on the plane. TSA had no issues. I regularly pack a few bags of chips/fruit when flying on short trips.
I have frequently brought a full meal through. For my last trip I had a to-go box in my hand as I walked through security (so it wasn't hidden in my bag).
The only time I ever had a problem was when my meal was a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil, and there I just got a secondary search.
Right, my general point though being government agencies are going to shift more and more cost onto consumers/private organizations. CLEAR is a cbp thing, as I remember.
CLEAR = biometric thing that checks your identity, letting you skip waiting in the line to show your ID to TSA. You still take off your shoes and empty your carryon bag for the x-ray, you still go through the body scanner, but it gets you up to that point faster.
TSA Pre = separate security line at airports which support it. Leave your shoes on, leave stuff in your bag, go through metal detector instead of body scanner. Basically the pre-9/11 airport security experience. Some airports which don't fully support Pre do various forms of relaxed rules for you when passing through an otherwise standard post-9/11 process.
Global Entry = expedited passage through customs on entering the US.
NEXUS = expedited passage through customs in both directions at the US/Canada border.
Global Entry is likely the best value for money/effort, since it also gets you Pre, and also provides you with an ID card that you can use when crossing into the US by land, and use of an expedited lane at land crossings if you register your vehicle. NEXUS has similar benefits for US/Canada border and includes Pre, but is more difficult to obtain because you have to pass background checks from and interview with officers of both countries (CBSA and USCBP; Global Entry only requires check/interview with USCBP).
SENTRI = expedited land crossing at US/Mexico border.
NEXUS is the best value IMO. It’s half the price of Global Entry, and _includes_ Global Entry (effectively), PreCheck and SENTRI. The interviews are straight forward and conducted back to back at the same physical location. Scheduling might be the only challenge — there are fewer locations than Global Entry.
All current NEXUS members, and U.S. citizens and U.S. lawful permanent residents who are SENTRI members, are eligible to use Global Entry kiosks once they provide fingerprints and document information to CBP. If CBP already has your fingerprints and document information on file, you can use Global Entry kiosks without further action and at no additional cost. If you are a Mexican national in SENTRI, you must apply for Global Entry through your TTP account. For additional Global Entry benefit information, log on to your TTP account.
> In Europe’s Schengen passport area, they have grown since more thorough checks were introduced last year owing to the migrant crisis.
For those not from Europe: You don't actually go through a passport check to travel between the Schengen countries (This is almost the whole EU minus the UK). Airlines - especially budget airlines - might sometimes check to make sure you haven't given your pass to someone else, and there will be a security check, but there is no border/passport check (also no e-gates).
Regarding the quote from the article above, that basically means that a lot (almost half) of the passengers are _not_ facing this problem because they are traveling between Schengen countries.
(off topic: great example of one of the benefits of the EU, in my opinion)
> You don't actually go through a passport check ...
It is also a big improvement. In the Jason Bourne book (published 1980), almost the entire first half of the book is him getting from Portugal to Switzerland, and all the shenanigans required. (No passport etc).
In the film (2002), they showed a high speed train for about 2 seconds!
> For those not from Europe: You don't actually go through a passport check to travel between the Schengen countries
Not exactly true. France has reinstated border control since 2015 due to the "emergency". Germany is talking about reinstating border control in places like Bavaria, though it's unclear whether they will have a hard border control, or whether they will simply profile people at the border.
Depends on the border.
For about two years after the attacks, the A1 (major highway between France and Belgium) was restricted to one lane, with barrier chicanes before reaching the border.
Eventually the three bored policemen at the border left, but the barriers remained for a very long time.
We've been told to keep passports handy when going from Copenhagen (Denmark) to Malmö (Sweden) by train since there are checks, but police got bored halfway and left the train. Maybe it's because of time pressure, but they don't necessarily control every person moving between Schengen countries.
I believe you still need to 'prove who you are', which means a photo ID.
Non-Northern Irish UK drivers licenses didn't have photos until '98, so even though Brits didn't technically need a passport to visit other EU countries you kind of needed a passport
For intra-schengen travel you are supposed to have a national identity card or passport, not just a photo ID. I don't think Brits have those cards yet so they still need passports.
The British were opposed to National ID cards, so they were never introduced. They tried in 2006, but it ended up being repealed on the grounds that it was an invasion of civil liberties and privacy. A rare moment of clarity for the UK govt.
You need to be able to prove who you are, but you don't often need to do so.
I have been checked by police on a train from Denmark to Germany; the guy they arrested (or at least, led away) looked a bit like me. They only checked the two of us - a proportionate check, which is allowed by the Schengen rules.
It could be the same on a plane, except presumably they can check when the boarding pass is scanned at security.
I do not normally show a passport travelling from Denmark to Germany, by train or plane.
The UK and Ireland are their own mini-Schengen called the "Common Travel Area". Irish and British people don't need to show ID to travel between the two countries, but they do need to show ID to prove they are Irish or British and hance entitled to travel without ID [0].
The point is only one of them joining the Schengen would require building a wall between northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland. I’m sure hat would go over very well... /s
There was a rather ironic constellation, when Switzerland joined the Schengen area in 2008, but Liechtenstein joined 6 month later. (There is no border or customes control between Switzerland and Liechtenstein).
In theory it would have ment to put up full border checks between the two countries, since Liechtenstein would not have been part of the area and Schengen checks are pretty thorough.
Cooler heads prevaled. Especially since Liechtenstein doesn't have an international airport and is completely enclosed by Schengen countries. So the status quo remained.
One another interesting sidenote. Before 2008, when there were long queues at Zurich airport they sometimes just opened the floodgates and let people in un-checked. Mind you this being Switzerland I'm pretty sure that it was heavily observed and this didn't happen recklessly.
However, since Schengen this is a no-go and each and every passenger entering or leaving the Schengen area must be checked (alas, it's probably the most efficient passport control I've ever experienced, except, possibly, Singapore).
Any particular airlines or airports? I've flown from Frankfurt to Amsterdam without checks (they have automatic gates for boarding cards at security and the gate on both sides). In the case of outgoing Schengen flights for amsterdam there is for sure no police ID check (unless of course you fly outside of Schengen).
Airline crew did check my ID last time flying to Italy with Vueling (at the gate), but this was not a border check but just a name-check with the boarding pass.
Putting the cost of increased staff and gates onto the airports seems like a pretty obvious solution. Short queues can be a competitive advantage for an airport, and are obviously something that airlines (the paying customers at an airport) value. Increase the gate fees to cover the extra cost of more customs agents. It's the easiest way to pass the cost on to the actual users of the service, whether they're tax-paying residents or non-tax-paying visitors.
I'm not sure what the airport's argument is that they shouldn't be paying the full cost of passport control services. A service that only benefits travelers shouldn't be coming out of the general tax revenue funds.
Competitive advantage for an airport? Airports are chosen based on geographical location, not service. Most people live near one major international airport. There isn't some large market of with airports springing up all of the time, they are dictated by regulatory barriers and are natural monopolies.
Passport control doesn't benefit travelers, it hinders them. It benefits the security of the nation, which is precisely the purpose of the general tax fund.
Not at all. I live about halfway between two "major" international airports, each of which is about two hours by train. Or I have a local airport - ten minutes by city bus - with a much more restricted flight selection. If my destination is London, that in fact translates to a choice of five airports at the other end; and if I decide, for example, that Heathrow is my preferred arrival point, that means not only will I have a very different experience depending on the airline and hence which terminal, but also means I can decide between a direct flight from either of those more distant origins, or to take connecting flights, and thus have a further choice to make in each direction when I may be able to choose between changing in Frankfurt, Vienna, Hamburg, Cologne or Brussels. For a frequent flyer there are so many factors to consider in choosing routes, airport competitiveness is very very important indeed. Recently my home airport had me fill in a passenger survey while waiting to board, designed to elicit my reasons for choosing that airport; they hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of the multiple variables I need to take into account when booking flights.
There is a market when you factor in connecting flights. If, say, Delta wants to pay for better staffing at their international hubs they could market that to prospective customers in their non-hub markets.
"Fly home from Europe through DTW where passport lines are under 10 minutes!"
If they had a choice, airports and airlines wouldn't pay for passport control services, because they'd rather not have passport control, it adds confusion and delay to the travel process.
Since governments generally insist on having these services, they should be the ones to pay.
I don't really see how is this a question at all. The state mandates passport control, and any airport wishing to operate legally must contract the border patrol for this, and pay for them. And it should be per checked passport, and they should be able to contract staff based on the predicted demand curve.
If it's a new private highway, then the operators should, sure. Other than that it doesn't really matter, as Congress probably budgeted for the border crossing when it decided to build the highway and connect it to the neighboring country's highway/road.
>A service that only benefits travelers shouldn't be coming out of the general tax revenue funds.
I'd argue this point - while I hate borders as a concept, I think the idea is that taxpayers benefit somehow from having border control. National security / economy reasons. What would stop an airport from saying "it's our responsibility? Ok, we hired a bum off the street, he can't read but whatever" and greenlighting everyone going through?
Or, if the argument is "it's government-run, but the aiprot pays for it," I don't know, it seems like it leaves open too wide a door for corruption.
> Or, if the argument is "it's government-run, but the aiprot pays for it," I don't know, it seems like it leaves open too wide a door for corruption.
I would assume there are various things in US that private companies are required to buy from government (e.g. licenses that might include inspections for things like drugs or x-ray devices) and I would at least hope that corruption isn't that rampart there.
It'd be nice if there was an actual global version of the American Global Entry/Nexus/Sentri system. I know coordinating between many countries would be a pain, and a lot of people don't like the idea of being added to a government registry and having biometric scans and a background check run, so such a system is probably not feasible for everyone.
However, I have zero regrets signing up for Nexus due to frequent travel to Canada. Nexus includes Global Entry and TSA Precheck for less than the price of Precheck alone. Flying between the US and Canada usually just requires a couple of taps on a screen and you're done with customs, and often times driving over the border I don't get any questions at all.
I do understand that we shouldn't have to pay for this expedited service and it should be available to everyone, but I'm constantly surprised by how many frequent US/Canadian travelers don't even know it's an option.
No, thanks. Countries should serve people by making border crossing fast for everyone. GE is an ugly workaround, and shouldn't be needed in any civilised country (and yes, my country has an efficient border, the absolute longest I've seen or even heard of on the news is a 15 minute wait due to unlucky arrival timing - EU/EFTA still had no wait on that occasion due to automatic border gates).
I think it should only be used to get back into your host country. When I'm travelling part of the nice thing of going there is to get a stamp in your passport.
Stamps are going away. Lots of countries no longer stamp passports, at least in some situations. Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Korea. The US will generally not stamp their own passports.
Frankly, I'm fine with it now that the US no longer lets you add pages to an existing passport.
There's some options, for example business travelers can get the APEC business travel card, which allows the use of e-gates.[1] Similarly, if you travel to Hong Kong more than a few times a year, you can enroll in the frequent visitor program which allows use of e-gates.[2]
> Interesting. It does seem like there's a smattering of other national programs that work in part with Global Entry (many at an additional cost).
It looks like Germany is the only Schengen country on that list. Does anyone with Global Entry have experience applying for EasyPass-RTP with a US passport?
I can't tell from the description that Global Entry is a requirement or enhances approval chances. From the description U.S. ePassport holders can apply and if approved it's good for the duration of the ePassport. I guess the next time I'm in Germany I'll find out!
The systems in EU are much better than the weird amalgamation that TSA has cooked up for us. With a EU passport traveling from the US I can sometimes just go through a gate that scans my passport and takes a photo and does a biometric verification in 10 minutes total. When traveling back to the US I always get to stand in a line for at least 30 minutes no matter what things I use and then talk to the friendly CBP officer
> The systems in EU are much better than the weird amalgamation that TSA has cooked up for us. With a EU passport traveling from the US I can sometimes just go through a gate that scans my passport and takes a photo and does a biometric verification in 10 minutes total. When traveling back to the US I always get to stand in a line for at least 30 minutes no matter what things I use and then talk to the friendly CBP officer
Huh? We're talking about passport control, which is completely separate from TSA.
The experience you're describing, by the way, is exactly reversed for people traveling on a US passport. When traveling with a US passport to Europe, I have to stand in the longer, non-EU line. When traveling back to the US, I go straight to an electronic kiosk that scans my passport, and it takes about five minutes.
As an American traveling to Europe I find that when there is a line the EU gate attendants will see my US passport while I'm heading to the line and send me through the EU only line. Even in the non-EU line they glance at my passport and stamp it - it takes less than a minute to process me.
When I travel back the to the US I wait in very long lines, often for an hour, and then they ask a bunch of questions. I hate travel because getting back home is so hard.
> When I travel back the to the US I wait in very long lines, often for an hour, and then they ask a bunch of questions.
Agreed. I am getting progressively more upset at the quantity of questions I get--and I'm not the only one; it is trivial to hear what is being asked of others at the same arrivals hall in the citizens-only line--asked when returning to the United States.
I realize this is probably not a controversial opinion around these parts, but since, as a US citizen, I am guaranteed the right of entry into my own country, I believe the questions should be limited solely to establishing my identity. Where I went, why I went, and what I did while I was there are none of my government's business, absent being accused of a crime.
One time I got asked why I claimed to have gone to a place on vacation but my spouse wasn't traveling with me. That seems very out of line to me.
Once, when returning to the US, I was asked why I was wearing a coat. Because it's December and I just flew in from Frankfurt, you dunderhead...
Weirder were the two times an agent suggested that with my background I should join an intelligence agency. I was working on dual CS and international relations degrees at the time, which I did not mention to the agent. I should really file a FOIA request on myself to find out what was in my file that prompted those questions.
This has gotten piles better in the last 3 months at Schipol at least. US passports now go through the automated EU lanes and at the end you are diverted over to a little booth to get a stamp. It's wildly faster than it used to be (and I always felt that Schipol was pretty on their game already).
I spent almost 3 hours in line at JFK, with an European passport. That is actually one of the main reasons why I probably won't come back anytime soon.
> I spent almost 3 hours in line at JFK, with an European passport. That is actually one of the main reasons why I probably won't come back anytime soon.
Right, we've established that queues for people traveling on foreign passports are longer and more frustrating than queues for people traveling with the local passports. That's the problem this article is talking about: queues for people traveling with foreign passports.
No, they're not the same thing. GE/NEXUS is a trusted traveller program where they do a full background check on you to see if you are a risk. Passports never provided that; a passport is just a travel document saying who you are, not a bilateral authorization from the security services of both countries that you're not and will not be a security risk.
I don't know, mine contains a request from Her Brittanic Majesty's Secretary of State, in the name of Her Majesty, that I should be allowed 'to pass freely without let or hindrance' and says nothing about requiring me to be inconvenienced and held up...
Agreed. The costs vary a lot too: the US is pretty good ($100/5 years, includes precheck), but you would have to travel a fair bit to make it worthwhile in the UK (£50/1 year + £20 registration).
Nexus for me was $50/5 years, while Precheck alone was $80/5 years, so it was a no-brainer. Prices may have changed since then, though, because I believe I signed up in 2016.
The only difficult part was setting an afternoon aside to go get scanned/interviewed (if you even want to call it an interview, as I believe I was asked only one question: Why do you want this?).
Yeah. I have Global Entry and actually fly to London semi-regularly (a few times a year) which qualifies for the UK system but I don't travel enough for it to be worthwhile.
I couldn't read the full article, but the Mobile Passport app has improved my traveling experience through passport control. On a recent trip from Europe to SFO, the regular line for US citizens was really long, the Global Entry kiosks were full, but there was no one in the Mobile Pass line. We went through passport control in under 3 minutes.
the first rule of the mobile passport app is don't talk about mobile passport!! it is great, generally the same experience as global entry. and I'm worried that if more people use it, it will become as busy as everything else.
This is definitely the result of unintended consequences.
They added specific lanes for nationals to use; nationals are the taxpayers therefore they're the ones who are most listened to. As a consequence the nationals lines were always fast and well staffed, while the international entry lines grew longer and longer.
If they hadn't have split the lines, everyone would be on the same "side" and complaints from nationals would result in improved passport control for everyone.
I just entered the US at SFO a couple of weeks ago.
There were big (permanent) signs up directing us to a citizens line and a noncitizens line. They weren't taking that especially seriously; there was also a staffer at the fork directing citizens into the noncitizens line and noncitizens into the citizens line.
My guess is that this was an attempt to balance the waiting time in each line. It was a horrible system, largely because the system was barely able to admit noncitizens at all. Both lines crawled as the noncitizens stepped up to a booth and were s-l-o-w-l-y fingerprinted and eventually waved on their way.
Contrast what happened just a couple weeks earlier when I entered China. Fingerprinting was required for entering noncitizens there too. But you didn't have it done at the booth while everyone waited in line behind you. You got yourself fingerprinted at one of a row of unmanned machines, got a receipt from the machine, and then went to get in line. All the immigration booth did was take your receipt.
What they do is as a plane arrives, they direct people to the appropriate side. The citizens line process a lot quicker, so as they get empty, some non-citizen queuers are told to move over to the now mostly empty citizen lines. Then the next plane's passengers arrive and the whole process is repeated. ie the primary goal is that citizens go quick, and the others are second priority. But as you noticed, it starts getting messy as multiple plane arrivals overlap with each other, queues progress at random rates, and it isn't a particular effective system anyway. The booths work the same way as you described China's, but have additional complications (eg people using the app, and the receipt.)
I had the misfortune of arriving on an international flight to SFO when they first got those booths. Some official decided to constantly shout and berate everyone trying to figure them out (he would keep contradicting the screens, or interrupt people trying to read them etc). Thankfully I haven't experienced that since.
And it used to be a lot worse. Instead of a single long queue, there would be long separate queues for each desk. It became quite an art trying to deduce which lines would process quickly.
> The booths work the same way as you described China's, but have additional complications (eg people using the app, and the receipt.)
But when you use the Chinese fingerprinting machine, you're not holding up the immigration line. This makes a big difference in queue times! SFO is wasting an incredible amount of passenger time by making everyone in line wait for everyone else to get fingerprinted.
The last time I went through the lines at SFO there was roughly speaking a queue for the machines, and then after that lines for the booths & officers. If one person took 10 minutes on a machine, it wouldn't matter since the machine queue still flowed as did the booth queue. Have they reorganised it again?
When I entered on the 12th, ten days ago, there were no freestanding fingerprinting machines. (Actually, there was one, but it wasn't in use.) Instead, the immigration booth itself took your fingerprints using a much smaller machine. This is, obviously, a logistical disaster, and I'm stupefied that they were using a better system and threw it out.
Thanks for the clarification. My experience has been that every time I use the machines, they then retake the fingerprints and retina at the officer anyway. (This is possibly because I'm a green card holder.)
They also seem to have a wide range in staffing levels, and adjust what is "open" based on that.
You are right about the efficiency. Quite simply none of the people involved at that level have any incentive to improve it. It won't improve their pay and promotions, and the less efficient the bigger an empire can be built by managers.
Specific lanes for citizens of the country have existed for a very long time, but the article calls the issue out as having mostly arisen in the last three years. Seems unlikely that a thing that had already been there for decades has caused the (apparently) sudden decline.
> On August 13th Virgin Atlantic grumpily published data showing that Heathrow hit its target for processing more than 95% of non-EEA passengers within 45 minutes on only one day in July, with some waiting up to 156 minutes
I was one of those people, traveling to Heathrow at the end of July on an EU flight (from Berlin) on a US passport. It took more than 90 minutes to reach the front of the queue.
You'd think that it wouldn't take long to process people traveling from the Schengen area[0], but they have little incentive to make this faster, unless their domestic airlines (like Virgin Atlantic) start complaining.
[0] I'm aware the UK isn't a Schengen country, but that's the point: if you're going to have passport control at the border, and if you're going to separate out people traveling on EU passports (which is more or less analogous to people from Schengen countries), then why such a delay for travelers coming from non-EU Schengen countries (like Iceland), or, for that matter, people who aren't traveling on an EU passport, but are coming from an EU country?
My question is: why can't we process the incoming passengers in flight?
When I board a USA->EU flight, I have to record my passport #. The passport and its holder are visually verified at checkin. If anything is out of order I can't board.
So why, during those 8 hours while I fly over, can't I just be cleared? If I show up and my face matches my passport (visually, biometrically, chip ID-wise, whatever) and my visa status is in order, can't I just proceed to customs?
You are (typically) being checked by an airline staffer for the simple reason that if they fly you somewhere where you are denied entry, they may be obligated to fly you back on their next flight. It's a fair bit of behind-covering for the carrier, but doesn't have the authority of the inbound country's border controls.
(I also have my passport on file with Delta. It's rare that my passport is checked carefully before boarding an outbound flight to Europe.)
What are they doing to you when you go through immigration? I generally go through quite quickly -- once I make it to the head of the line -- because all they do is look at the form and check that my face matches my passport. (And stamp the passport, if relevant.)
My recent passport shows me with a beard instead of facial features; I did have a clerk ask me for ID with a different picture...
I think that's looking at it from the wrong angle. If everyone could pass through as easily as you and I, we wouldn't have the problem of long queues at border control.
That's only true if the long queues are caused by some people having a difficult time at the booth. But that problem mostly goes away as soon as you have two booths.
For long lines to persist because of outliers taking a long time to get through, you need those outliers to be so frequent that every single booth is usually jammed by an "anomaly". In the example I bring up in my other comment, where every noncitizen coming through had to be slowly fingerprinted at the booth, that was the case, and the line was incredibly slow.
But where that's not the case, it seems more like the issue is that there's a good amount of overhead involved even in processing someone quickly (signal booth availability; wait for the person to walk up...) and there just aren't enough staff to process several hundred people quickly.
> That's only true if the long queues are caused by some people having a difficult time at the booth. But that problem mostly goes away as soon as you have two booths.
It doesn't at all. Heathrow is the main airport discussed in this article. They had several booths the last time I went through, and it still took nearly two hours to get through the line.
It's a result from queueing theory. Think of the queue of incoming work (such as immigrants to be processed) as the amount of work each takes on average plus some statistic representing a really large amount of time that most jobs will not require, but some will.
First off, to prevent long waits, you need enough capacity to do the work at the average rate at which it comes in. If your bank gets an average of 20 customers an hour, you need to be able to process 20 customers per hour, or queues will not only form but grow steadily longer.
But, even if you have a single worker doing work at exactly the average incoming rate, any outlier jobs that take more than the average amount of work (one unfortunate customer that takes the time of four ordinary ones) will cause the formation of a queue, because the only available worker is occupied. And any queues that do form will be permanent, because incoming jobs fill the queue just as quickly as your worker clears it. These queues have no good reason to exist -- you're doing the work just as fast as it arrives -- but they can't clear. A second worker will solve this problem almost entirely (on the assumption that outliers are rare) -- the expected queueing time from a single worker who is expected to process 10 customers an hour is vastly larger than the expected queueing time from two workers who are expected to process 5 customers an hour each. The improvement comes from the fact that while an outlier is jamming one worker, the queue behind that outlier can still be cleared by the other worker.
Airport immigration doesn't work this way; they have short periods in which hundreds of people arrive simultaneously and long periods in which nobody arrives at all. So they provide some amount of staff and expect them to gradually clear the queues that form instantly whenever an airplane lands. They don't expect the entire airplane to be cleared simultaneously even though everyone on it arrived simultaneously. In this case, the queue time is just a function of how much work there is to do, and how much staff is available to do it, and your two-hour queue time is a problem of low staffing levels, not poor queue design.
I’ve flown through Heathrow one time. I hope it will be my last. The lines and the crowding to get through passport control and security were unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world. Thank goodness our destination has frequent flights from Heathrow, because we didn’t even come anywhere close to making our connection.
> I’ve flown through Heathrow one time. I hope it will be my last. The lines and the crowding to get through passport control and security were unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world.
I nearly missed a connecting flight in Heathrow earlier this year, because it took them thirty minutes to get seven people through security. I kid you not - I was seventh in line at security[0], and they were only allowing one person at a time to unload the contents of their bag onto the conveyor belt. They had five or six agents all "working" there, and a peak throughput of one passenger every three minutes.
[0] International flights connecting in Heathrow have to go through security again, even though they've already gone through security at their original point of departure.
> [0] International flights connecting in Heathrow have to go through security again, even though they've already gone through security at their original point of departure.
That's not terribly uncommon, or particularly unreasonable -- security standards and implementation vary significantly in different countries, and in as much as security screening is useful, you'd want to redo the screening with the local standards, unless you have separate facilities for international flights arriving from countries you know do a good job and other countries, but the customs/passport control section is probably shared among all international arrivals.
It is somewhat annoying however given within Schengen there is no requirement to make passengers from the Common Travel Area (i.e., UK + RoI + Isle of Man + Channel Islands) re-clear security, whereas there is in the opposite direction.
Nowadays there's very little difference to the security procedure between the two, and I'm always surprised it doesn't hurt Heathrow more as a hub for ex-EU passengers.
That said, in the UK case at least, it requires a change in law, so it needs to become enough of an issue it's worth some at least small amount of political time.
> That's not terribly uncommon, or particularly unreasonable
I fly internationally very frequently. I'm aware that it's not uncommon to have to go through security when making a connection. I'm saying that Heathrow's security is incredibly slow.
Yeah, not at all uncommon. More annoying than that, in terms of likelihood of missing a connection and getting stuck overnight at an airport hotel or whatever, is when US airports unload your luggage and make you check it in again. Argh.
Transiting at Frankfurt airport, I didn't have to reclear security when flying from the US, but I Had to reclear when transiting through London Heathrow.
So apparently Germany trusts some countries' airport security, but the UK doesn't.
> So apparently Germany trusts some countries' airport security, but the UK doesn't.
They apparently don't trust Singapore. I was on a flight from SIN->JFK that had a stop in FRA (we got off and got back on the same plane). We still had to go through security.
I don't think it's Singapore specifically, seems like all flights incoming to the US always have to pass through some sort of secondary security. For example, MUC->DUS->JFK required additional security when boarding the JFK bound plane (and it was additional even for those entering the airport at DUS).
JFK->SIN though we could get off and didn't have to worry about any security or immigration.
Each Heathrow terminal is so different from the others, it's really like four different airports that happen to share runways. Terminal 2 (used by all the Star Alliance airlines) is by far my favourite of all the international airports I've been through - outbound security is usually very efficient (this is not fast track, the normal lanes) and the e-passport gates generally have very short queues, unfortunately the non-EU passport control does look like it's somewhat slower though.
I believe their idea is that if you are a EU passport holder, you are (likely) also paying taxes in Europe, therefore you are contributing with your money to the border services at the airport.
No, the important distinction is EU citizens have (by treaty) a relatively unconditional right to enter, reside, and work in the UK, and therefore are exempt from practically all questions related to "are you going to overstay or try and work here illegally?". That's the part that most of the immigration questioning is related to—assessing that risk.
This is because they have reduced staff numbers with the introduction of e-gates, so there is less flexibility to process peak queues. The KPIs are also very generous, 45 minutes is too long.
As an Aussie this pisses me off entering the UK. When Brits travel to Australia they can use e-gates, but the same courtesy is not extended back to us. Frequent travellers can pay to use the gates, but not everyone has that option. If the strategy is to use the gates they should make them as available as possible.
When Brits travel to Australia they can use e-gates, but the same courtesy is not extended back to us.
Sure can. When I flew to Brisbane, no human inspected my paperwork. From plane to train, the only human interaction was someone taking a stub of something that came out of a machine and waving me through. Really smooth.
CBP has a pretty handy app to lookup wait times at US airports at https://awt.cbp.gov/ . Looking at the wait times for JFK for the past week, the maximum wait time for non-US citizens exceeded 120 minutes often.
Even US Citizens don't really get by much faster. I'm often corralled into the USC line because of some weird green card expiration issue and it's certainly not any faster.
Precisely. I am looking for other countries to adopt this for us-bound flights. Some airports have preclearence, for example. Would be great if i could use global entry in istanbul. I literally had to go through 5 security checkpoints just to get on flight.
I've cut my business travel a significant amount over the last years as a result of the time it takes to clear the border control in the US. In the past i used to fly the route between Europe and the US maybe 10-11 times a year, now at most 2. I will say i've always been met with respect when finally reaching the end of the line but the line has grown on average where a couple of years ago i had to stand maybe 45 minutes to being consistently over 2 hours. Came in to SFO a month back and had to wait in the line for 4 hours and 30 minutes. That's adding another 4 hours and 30 minutes to an already long trip.
The end result of this is that i absolutely try to avoid flying if i can, doing as much i can online.
I've cut my business travel within the USA due to the variable time it takes to get through security -- on a good day I can breeze through in 20 minutes or less... on a bad day it can take 90 minutes or more. So to be assured of making my flight, I need to plan for the worst.
Even real-time security wait times are little help since even if it shows 20 minute waits 2 hours before the flight, an equipment problem or personnel shortage can make that wait much longer before I get to the airport.
I've cut my leisure plane travel for the same reason. I used to fly ~10 trips a year, but in the past few years I've cut back to 2-3, and that's mostly to visit family.
I did. Well, Global Entry. Still subject to equipment failure or other slowdown. Clear might be better, but I refuse to spend $179 to avoid an inefficient process I'm forced to endure - it's easier to just stop flying.
It would be great if that line chart with the wait times at Heathrow could be extended with the number of passengers who land, and the number of employees working border services. I would like to see if there is a correlation between the number of employees and the wait time, and if passenger numbers have increased or remained steady.
Some flights you can/must? clear customs pre-flight. It's weird (well, maybe not so weird, airports are weird legal areas), as you are considered in u.s. territory even though your still in a foreign country.
Its called pre-clearance, and it's available in Canada, Carribbean, Ireland and UAE. [1] Despite preclearance, the host country still has legal jurisdiction.
It allows flights to operate between a foreign country and a non-international U.S. airport.
Not considered US territory, CBP preclearance is just that, a preclearance. It’s still under the jurisdiction of the host country. The CBP can and sometimes does conduct inspection on precleared passengers at the actual US port of entry.
> The CBP can and sometimes does conduct inspection on precleared passengers at the actual US port of entry.
How? I'm pretty sure that when I've flown pre-cleared from Canada and Bermuda, the arrival was to a non-international gate, opening directly out into the airport rather than via the side hallways that take you to border control. So if they wanted to check you on entry, what do they do, meet you at the gate?
They can conduct inspections right at the gate. It’s uncommon, but it happens.
Typically when this happens, the cabin crew announces that the CBP is conducting inspections outside the gate and asks passengers to get their travel documents ready. Outside the gate CBP officers will instruct passengers to form one or more lines and then inspect everybody’s travel documents. Sometimes they only approach certain people and let most passengers walk by.
So there's not money available to pay someone $18/hr to perform data entry and stamp passports but there is money available to pay someone $18 an hour to grope people and lecture them about what they can and can't bring past security. Top notch prioritization right there. Where is the oversight? Who is letting this happen?
We've got TSA holding the nation's airports hostage back in 2015 by slowing EVERYTHING down in order to get more funding. Many airports/airlines now offering "expedited security" as part of their "pay for the oxygen on the plane" price plans, this on top of CLEAR/PreCheck. So now TSA knows they can do that, if they don't get the funding from the gov they'll just leverage schemes to get it from airlines/airports, as the article indicates.
I remember as a kid, my parents scrounged together enough cash for disneyland tickets, the flights there, and some nights at a motel. There wasn't room in the budget for comfort items like food on the plane, which back then was free. I can't go full grumpy old man mode cause I'm only 27, but damn does it feel like it will only get shittier and shittier to be poor in this country.