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Comment by jgrall | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for using the app, and I'm sorry if we let you down on an international arrival. It happens - customs and baggage claim are both pretty unpredictable.

As it turns out, we do try to factor additional time for international customs, but it's just an average since there's no real-time data available on customs wait times (which vary widely by airport, time of day, what passport the traveler has, and season). I also expect the customs folks don't make this information available because perhaps it would raise an airport security issue that could be exploited. In any case, I plan to submit freedom of information act requests for customs wait times, baggage wait times, and airport security wait times (that latter the TSA currently collects, but only makes available via their myTSA app).

Anyone have experience with filing freedom of information act requests, who might be able to help?

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Hey,

I don't know whom you may be able to get to help, but I would bet that the government doesn't actually have great data on custom wait time- I've never seen them track someone from entry to pass-through. I strongly doubt they have that.

Rather, I think you may have come upon a really cool opportunity- find a way to track it! You'll have data no one else on the planet has. It's like when Uber starts in a new city- the error on their time estimate starts high and decreases over time. If enough people use it, you'll get really got at predicting the wait time based on the factors you mentioned.

Idea: let the traveler download a free companion to the app. Then the user links to the traveler. Once the traveler lands, they can turn on their phone and let you see location.

The user gets an alert "Bob has landed!" and actually see where the traveler is. Over time, you'll get really great at refining the wait time prediction algorithm. You can ask nationality, etc.

Potential problems: No phone, international traveler can't use phone in destination due to roaming charges, can't have phone on in certain custom areas.

We do this in GateGuru already. I think you are underestimating the scale needed to produce statistically significant models across airports (or even within one across checkpoints). MyTSA even has trouble with the crowd sourcing and they have TSA brand. It's a classic chicken and egg problem: nobody wants to use the app until its meaningful and it's not meaningful until you have huge numbers using the app.

Our approach in GateGuru is to bundle the security wait time functionality with other, highly engaging and free services (such as flight tracking, itinerary management, and our amenity database) in a completely FREE app and scale our way into it.

We are deep into it and its an ongoing part of our strategy, but its not clear to me how you could generalize this and build a business around it without an amazing solution to this fundamental problem.

The biggest variable I found travelling around Europe last year (38 flights in 35 weeks) was which passport queue you had to join. If you're a citizen entering your own country, customs is usually much faster - it's an added variable, not sure how easy (or helpful) it might be to build in.

(My beautiful wife and I were lucky in that we could cherry pick - I was travelling on my UK passport, she on her Australian, so depending on which queue was shortest we either went through together in the UK / Europe line (I'm travelling with my wife) or the Other Passports line (My wife is travelling with me)).

A minor quibble with an otherwise great app. Glad you're on it.

Every federal agency is required to designate a FOIA officer. In my limited exerperiance, the helpfulness of these officers vary wildly between agencies.

http://www.dhs.gov/foia-contact-information

TSA's is about 2/3 of the way down the page. Good luck!

FOIA letter generator: http://www.rcfp.org/foia

Note that there's an art to writing an effective request. Too broad and you will be told 100,000 pages are responsive and how would you like to pay for the photocopying. Too narrow and you will get back "no responsive records found."

I think getting useful data on customs clearance would be a long shot -- good luck.

Startup idea: Waze for waiting in lines - insights into line length/wait times, when to join the line etc.

Potential applications: airports; theme parks; customs; popular restaurants; product launches; movie premieres.

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