Airport Customs Wait Time?

[Randy W]

Ports of entry direct from China are LAX, SFO, (I think) Seattle, Chicago, and Newark.

 

To come through Dallas, you must be coming through Japan, or Korea. Right?

 

I'm not sure if this makes any difference, but there you are!

[tonado]

It depends on the POE. My wife took 3 hrs because the custom officer misplaced her passport. She was the last one to come out. The POE was NY JFK.

Edited November 7, 2005 by ttlee_99 (see edit history)

[singularis67]

Ports of entry direct from China are LAX, SFO, (I think) Seattle, Chicago, and Newark.

 

To come through Dallas, you must be coming through Japan, or Korea. Right?

 

I'm not sure if this makes any difference, but there you are!

166639[/snapback]

Yes...she will be coming through from Japan to Dallas...on AA...

[mrjones]

We flew in from Korea and had no problem going through customs and immigration. Since the lines were designated for either US citizens or non-citizens, I asked one of the officials if I could go through the same entry as my SO. He told me a specific line to enter.

 

My SO seemed to think another line was mandatory for Chinese and headed there on her own. After catching up with her, I asked a second official standing nearby who directed me to the same line as the original.

 

By the time we reached the line, we were at the end. Immigration seemed to want to get people through quickly and opened up a second table. The official at the table asked for the envelope and explained that he would keep certain papers and we would receive them in the mail a few weeks later. Even with the line delay (and I restroom break for me) we still got to the baggage area before our luggage arrived to go through customs.

 

Nobody asked any questions and we got our luggage back in quickly. The time between connecting flights was 8 hours. We got through immigration and customs so fast, that we still had to wait until Delta could issue us a boarding pass for the next flight (they cannot do so until 6 hours before the flight).

 

Just an aside, the LAX terminal was about the deadest terminal I've ever been in. Maybe the other LA terminals are better, but this was horrible. We had spent 4 hours waiting in Korea, but there was so much going on it wasn't too bad. LAX was like waiting for paint to dry.