I arrived at Minneapolis-St. Paul this past Sunday on an afternoon flight from Amsterdam Schiphol and saw this: the queue for immigrations filling all available space. Though I wasn’t going to waste time checking, it expect the line was snaking back towards the jetways.
MSP is a light-weight as far as international flights are concerned, with perhaps 15 international flights per day, most arriving separately so only one flight at a time needs to be processed. However, on Sunday three separate flights arrived at once: two from Schiphol (one on-time, mine extremely delayed), and one arriving early from Tokyo Haneda. Whether it is the airport of US Customs and Border Protection, it’s past their capacity.
London Heathrow is notorious for longer-than-expected/longer-than-hoped-for waits for immigrations, at times queueing times approaching three hours. The most common explanation is that the UK Border Force is understaffed, but that seems too stock an answer. Regardless, experienced travelers often avoid Heathrow for the uncertainty, knowing that total travel time, including immigrations, may be less even when the commute into London is longer.
Fortunately, I didn’t queue in that line, as I’m enrolled in Global Entry, which got me through immigrations in under five minutes. Incredibly, my bag was waiting for me at the carousel and I was out to meet my wife in another five minutes. The longest part of my wait was my wife getting to the airport!
