Passport queues vex airlines
economist.com
economist.com
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.
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....
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".
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.
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.
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.
But this is about the CBP, not the TSA.
Clear is not - it is private.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 can buy food once you're in the secure area, of couse, but it's generally quite expensive.
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.
I also bring a refillable water bottle.
> 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.
So go wild!
- leftover pizza - a sushi box from the grocery store - sandwich i made at home - chicken fingers
You can bring empty (plastic) bottles through security and fill them up at the next bathroom.
May not be a good idea at airports in countries where tap water quality is not up to scratch (or in Flint, MI).
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)
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.
I had to Google for this: http://www.blather.net/theblather/2016/01/crossing-border/
Oh, trust me, that I'm very much aware of. Brown people and others who look Arab or Muslim are selected and checked much more frequently.
On the other hand, when I flew from Athens to Zurich they (spot-) checked everbody's IDs and passports at the arrival gate.
I fly a lot and very rarely need ID. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't carry it and depending on the airport it may be checked.
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
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.
FTR Ireland is not in Schengen either. But it shares a land border with UK, and one country joining Schengen and the other not would be a silly idea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area#Ireland
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).
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Fly home from Europe through DTW where passport lines are under 10 minutes!"
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.
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?).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card
[2] https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/echannel_visitors.html
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...
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?
Frankly, I'm fine with it now that the US no longer lets you add pages to an existing passport.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That was not my experience the last two times I passed through AMS this summer.
You know when invented, that was the purpose of a passport!
Of course, it today's world you have to now pay extra for what used to be include.
Last border crossing at MIA the Mobile Passport reader guy was standing there all by himself. Cleared in 30 seconds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
JFK->SIN though we could get off and didn't have to worry about any security or immigration.
Mumbai has always been a breeze every time I've flown there, compared to Heathrow.
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?
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...
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.
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.
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 also have my passport on file with Delta. It's rare that my passport is checked carefully before boarding an outbound flight to Europe.)
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.
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.
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.
I am going home goddammit, i wont do any harm.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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_precleara...
They're just reporting that there is an airport that is having issues with queue size and Dallas paid for more agents?