A most amazing experience occurred yesterday: I arrived at my home from the airport in forty minutes. Not just the time en route, forty minutes from the plane’s wheels touching tarmac to Uber dropping me off. Forty minutes, IKYN.
No, I wasn’t in business or first class. And I checked a bag. And the flight was international. Forty minutes.
The ground staff were ready for us, the jet bridge was in position quickly after arriving at the gate, and I exited in a surprisingly-quick ten minutes. All Global Entry kiosks functioning and a short line at immigrations. I immediately identify my bag dropping onto the carousel belt as I arrive at baggage claim – likely loaded last due to a quick transfer at Schiphol. I grabbed my bag as it started its journey and exited customs. I might have been the first to escape.
Time spent navigating international formalities: twenty minutes.
The time-consuming steps now completed, the remaining steps are downhill: order an Uber, walk to the designated pickup point, wait, get in, get driven home. Time spent traveling home: twenty minutes.
Total time: forty minutes.
Root Cause Analysis
Professionally, a root cause analysis is executed when the unexpected occurs – usually something negative – but why not for a positive unexpected? Granted, this RCA is informal and not validated – similar to understanding a multi-threaded race condition – but can I identify contributing factors? Some potential factors:
- no other international flight arrived simultaneously: Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport‘s immigrations/customs area is small and compact, and is easily overwhelmed (which I’ve experienced);
- few Global Entry passengers therefore no backlog at the kiosks;
- my suitcase being among the first offloaded from the plane and delivered;
- Sunday mid-morning being off-peak period for air travel (at least at MSP) leading to fewer arriving passengers requesting Uber trips;
- less road traffic Sunday mid-morning than compared to weekday or rush hour traffic;
- my house is approximately seven miles from the airport.
Conclusion
A happy convergence of factors unlikely to ever occur again which led to the easiest international homecoming that I’m unlikely to ever experience again, though it’ll be tough to reset expectations the next time. But those memories, wow!
Image Credit
- “Traveling” by Sung,Di-Yen is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
