26 ms·

Passport queues vex airlines

79 points by prostoalex 8y ago

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
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?
- dang 8y ago
  Can you please not post shallow dismissals or ideological rants to HN? A substantive discussion needs to start out better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Someone1234 8y ago
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.
- beojan 8y ago
  They added queues for nationals because a large proportion of the people entering the country are people returning from a trip abroad.
- simonbyrne 8y ago
  My suggestion: any politician who states "[country name] is open for business" should be required to enter through the foreigners line.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  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.
  - rogerbinns 8y ago
    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.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > 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.
- pebers 8y ago
  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.
iamatworknow 8y ago
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.
- simonbyrne 8y ago
  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).
  - ghaff 8y ago
    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.
  - iamatworknow 8y ago
    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?).
- kevinkimball 8y ago
  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] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card [2] https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/echannel_visitors.html https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/echannel_visitors.html
chimeracoder 8y ago
> 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?
- mikeash 8y ago
  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.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > 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.
cdeez 8y ago
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.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  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.
notatoad 8y ago
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.
- komali2 8y ago
  >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.
  - buzer 8y ago
    > 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.
- toast0 8y ago
  I'm sure the argument goes somewhat like: 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.
komali2 8y ago
>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.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > 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....
hectormalot 8y ago
> 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)
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > 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.
  - GFischer 8y ago
    Apparently they're only temporary controls... I drove from Spain to France a few weeks ago... there was a sign saying "France"... and that was it. I had to Google for this: http://www.blather.net/theblather/2016/01/crossing-border/ http://www.blather.net/theblather/2016/01/crossing-border/
    - kweks 8y ago
      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.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
subculture 8y ago
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.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  Same here. The Mobile Passport app has been around for what, over two years now?, and the % of people that actually use it is still very very low. Last border crossing at MIA the Mobile Passport reader guy was standing there all by himself. Cleared in 30 seconds.
  - ryanburk 8y ago
    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.
angott 8y ago
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.
superseeplus 8y ago
CBP has a pretty handy app to lookup wait times at US airports at https://awt.cbp.gov/ 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.
- redisman 8y ago
  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.
  - tehlike 8y ago
    Get global entry.
    - barrow-rider 8y ago
      I'll second this. I don't like the idea of a play-to-play line, but in a practical sense I travel too much to not make use of this.
      - tehlike 8y ago
        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 am going home goddammit, i wont do any harm.
- sjg007 8y ago
  JFK is the busiest airport I think by volume... so not surprised.
throw7 8y ago
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.
- DrJokepu 8y ago
  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.
  - blahedo 8y ago
    > 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? Or am I just misremembering all this?
    - DrJokepu 8y ago
      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.
- wenc 8y ago
  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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_preclearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_precleara...
monksy 8y ago
That was the article? They're just reporting that there is an airport that is having issues with queue size and Dallas paid for more agents?
slashink 8y ago
This is true for me. 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.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  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.
  - moonka 8y ago
    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.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Sign up for TSA precheck.
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      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.

79 points by prostoalex 8y ago

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?

dang 8y ago
Can you please not post shallow dismissals or ideological rants to HN? A substantive discussion needs to start out better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Someone1234 8y ago

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.

beojan 8y ago
They added queues for nationals because a large proportion of the people entering the country are people returning from a trip abroad.
simonbyrne 8y ago
My suggestion: any politician who states "[country name] is open for business" should be required to enter through the foreigners line.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
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.
- rogerbinns 8y ago
  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.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > 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.
pebers 8y ago
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.

iamatworknow 8y ago

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.

simonbyrne 8y ago
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).
- ghaff 8y ago
  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.
- iamatworknow 8y ago
  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?).
kevinkimball 8y ago
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] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card [2] https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/echannel_visitors.html https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/echannel_visitors.html

chimeracoder 8y ago

> 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?

mikeash 8y ago
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.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > 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.

cdeez 8y ago

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.

EliRivers 8y ago
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.

notatoad 8y ago

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.

komali2 8y ago
>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.
- buzer 8y ago
  > 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.
toast0 8y ago
I'm sure the argument goes somewhat like: 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.

komali2 8y ago

>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.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> 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....

hectormalot 8y ago

> 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)

chimeracoder 8y ago
> 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.
- GFischer 8y ago
  Apparently they're only temporary controls... I drove from Spain to France a few weeks ago... there was a sign saying "France"... and that was it. I had to Google for this: http://www.blather.net/theblather/2016/01/crossing-border/ http://www.blather.net/theblather/2016/01/crossing-border/
  - kweks 8y ago
    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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

subculture 8y ago

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.

joezydeco 8y ago
Same here. The Mobile Passport app has been around for what, over two years now?, and the % of people that actually use it is still very very low. Last border crossing at MIA the Mobile Passport reader guy was standing there all by himself. Cleared in 30 seconds.
- ryanburk 8y ago
  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.

angott 8y ago

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.

superseeplus 8y ago

CBP has a pretty handy app to lookup wait times at US airports at https://awt.cbp.gov/ 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.

redisman 8y ago
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.
- tehlike 8y ago
  Get global entry.
  - barrow-rider 8y ago
    I'll second this. I don't like the idea of a play-to-play line, but in a practical sense I travel too much to not make use of this.
    - tehlike 8y ago
      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 am going home goddammit, i wont do any harm.
sjg007 8y ago
JFK is the busiest airport I think by volume... so not surprised.

throw7 8y ago

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.

DrJokepu 8y ago
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.
- blahedo 8y ago
  > 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? Or am I just misremembering all this?
  - DrJokepu 8y ago
    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.
wenc 8y ago
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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_preclearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_precleara...

monksy 8y ago

That was the article? They're just reporting that there is an airport that is having issues with queue size and Dallas paid for more agents?

slashink 8y ago

This is true for me. 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.

Johnny555 8y ago
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.
- moonka 8y ago
  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.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Sign up for TSA precheck.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    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.