Apparently, it used to be different. At least one other reviewer here thinks so but I think the review was written before 9/11. In those days, my colleagues tell me, you could breeze through passport control and be on your way with a lot of welcoming smiles.
I have travelled there a lot in the last year or so, and I can tell you that things have changed. Here are my tips for surviving the arrivals area.
1. Controls are a lot more stringent, as I have said, but the management don't seem to have trained the staff or added any more bodies to the effort. After getting off the plane and walking down a long, calm corridor, you turn a corner and are confronted (80% of the time in my experience) with the sight of a long, winding queue in a large hall which heads, snail like, towards a long row of booths - most of which do not have an immigration officer in them - where the passengers are to be processed.
2. Because of this congestion, it is essential that you not only disembark from the plane promptly, but that you also forget about looking dignified and run down the long corridor like the proverbial clappers. Every six people that you pass will save you at least 2 minutes in waiting time - you will notice that there are a lot of people!
3. This will not save you from quite a long wait anyway, as numerous
planes may have arrived at the same time, so the queue in the immigration hall might be quite a size already. I arrive on the Delta flight out of Manchester, which gets in at about 15:35 local time.
4. Some figures - I have travelled there 5 times in the last 14 months and of those times the longest wait (just in the immigration hall) was 2 hours and 30 minutes. The average is about 1 hour 45. Be prepared for this - you will have had a long trip already and you will now be standing on your feet for quite a while, with no entertaining distractions at all. I usually read a large chunk of a book. If your mobile phones work in the US, they will work in this hall - but officially you are not allowed to use them there though I have never seen anyone get reprimanded for it.
5. Ensure that you have all your paperwork filled in - one white and one green. One of them is to deny or confirm (with details) what produce/products you are bringing into the US. The other - which never fails to amuse me - has a number of security questions, including: Have you ever been involved in genocidal activities such as the holocaust? Ever been involved in criminal activities such as drug smuggling? Etc. Well, that should keep America safe!
6. Despite the fact that you were given this paperwork on the plane some 6 hours before, a significant number of your fellow travellers will only remember to do this when they get to the immigration desk!!! Stay calm at all times - your primal instinct will be to go berserk and bash people around you to death with your bag of duty free goods.
7. Also, there are no cheerful immigration officers. Do not try and crack a joke or even a smile at these guys. They look at you like you ticked a yes for all the questions on the green form...
8. Finally, you are through to the next round of this bizarre game. Time to collect your baggage. It is probably appropriate to explain that Atlanta airport is built in a very modular way. The entrance to the airport from outside is via terminal T and you arrive in terminal E - between you and T are 4 other terminals all laid out in a connecting row, called... terminals A, B, C and D (you get the idea). So you are as far from the exit to the outside world as you can be. Keep this in mind as it explains a feature that I have not seen anywhere else - once you collect your baggage from the carousel (waiting time up to 45 minutes) you are not allowed to take it with you. You have to go and put it on a conveyer belt that takes it all the way to another baggage carousel in terminal T. That is in the public area. You are now at the far end of the airport and your precious luggage is headed towards a place ahead of you where anybody can just walk in and take it! The race is on.
9. You now have to get through physical security, where since 9/11 they do everything by the book. Laptops have to come out of the case and go on a separate tray through the x-ray scanners. You will need to not only empty your pockets of change, car keys, mobilephones, etc. but also take off your belt and shoes, before going through the metal detector gate. Then you need to gather everything up, get dressed and move on (unless you set the alarm off in which case you get some really special attention). This is all well and good, but the security teams are not allowing any more time to process people than when they just waived them through! Totally the opposite of the tedious immigration hall, this is like the last days of the US Embassy in Saigon. Anyone would think there were cash prizes for getting passengers (customers, remember) through the system.
10. Suddenly, all is calm. You can now take the very efficient and beautifully air conditioned airport train to terminal T and if you are lucky you can get to your baggage before anybody else!
But maybe you will be lucky - on one blinding occasion I was off the plane and on the road in my rented car in exactly 1 hour. My worst time was almost 3 hours 30.
Hope this was useful, I'm too tired now to tell you what it is like coming the other way, but maybe you are too
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I think immigration officers are the only ones who do not have to have customer service training to improve customer relationships and be courteous because they don't want too. Another way to look at it is they treat you like a criminal until proven not so. Maybe we should all boycott visiting US until they become less offensive!:)
SueMagee 03.02.2004 11:10
I don't think I'm up to the excitement of it all - but it made fascinating reading.
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Advantages: A good example of how a large airport should be run Disadvantages: Perhaps a little more walking to your gate is required then other airports
Advantages: A good example of how a large airport should be run Disadvantages: Perhaps a little more walking to your gate is required then other airports
Feb 2nd, 2004
very helpful by (68%):
helpful by (32%):
