Those Long Lines After International Flights Are a Terminal Problem : Airports: Congestion and delays at immigration and customs stations throughout the country are grim facts. The runaway worst offender is LAX.

It was a typical day at the Tom Bradley International terminal at LAX.

In the arrivals area, lines of incoming passengers were everywhere . . . and no one was moving. Japan Airlines Flight 62 had arrived from Tokyo. So had All Nippon Airways Flight 6. Malaysian Airlines Flight 92 had just landed from Kuala Lumpur.

A German charter flight pulled up to the jetway. Qantas Flight 11 was right behind it, arriving from Sydney. In one two-hour period, 11 international flights had arrived at the terminal, and nine of them were jumbo jets.

Could the terminal adequately handle the thousands of jet-lagged passengers?

From a design perspective, the answer is yes. At LAX, the international arrivals building has 70 primary inspection stations where customs and immigration officers can process incoming passengers.

The problem has been in proper and adequate staffing. On an average, only 15 of these stations are ever manned at one time.

“The most we’ve ever seen staffed at one time has been 27,” says one station manager for a European carrier. “It’s a mess. We’ve had some of our passengers held on the plane because of the crowds, and then, even when they get off, it has sometimes taken two hours for passenger processing.”

Similar scenes of crowds and madness are repeated at any number of U.S. airports of entry, including Honolulu, Miami and John F. Kennedy in New York.

In the last five years, tourism to the United States has grown 49%. As a result, the number of people arriving in the United States has greatly outpaced immigration and customs facilities and the staff needed to process them.

A recent U.S. General Accounting Office report blamed a lack of proper airport and federal inspection facilities and staff for passenger waits of up to three hours at peak airline arrival times.

The GAO report surveyed 13 U.S. international airports and found congestion and long immigration and customs waits at each of them. LAX was by far the worst.

Average processing delays in Atlanta: 1 hour, 45 minutes. Chicago: one hour. San Francisco: up to two hours. JFK: 1 to 2 hours. Los Angeles: 2-3 hours.

“We suffer from a facilities problem,” says Donna Blanchard, duty manager for British Airways at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “Right now, until we get the new international terminal, we’re operating out of a converted garage.”

Currently, passengers arriving in Chicago on Thursday or Saturday stand a good chance of experiencing processing delays by customs and immigration.

And things in Chicago only threaten to get worse. “Every international carrier, including British Airways, wants to add flights here,” Blanchard says.

A recent projection by a group representing all international airlines in Chicago seems to confirm this. For example, American Airlines had six international flights per week to Chicago in 1989. It has 11 this year. The group predicts that by 1991, that number will increase to 16 per day ; by 1992, the number is expected to jump to 26 daily flights.

And when exactly will O’Hare get its new international terminal--Terminal 5? Current plans call for it to be operational in October . . . of 1993.

Saturdays are also a big problem at JFK. Japan Airlines’ Flight 008 from Tokyo lands in the afternoon. “It’s so backed up,” says Hiroyuki Funayama, JAL’s station manager at JFK, “that first the passengers have to wait on board the plane for 10 to 15 minutes. Then, once inside the terminal, they have had to wait for up to two hours to get processed.”

Last year, JFK had 9.25 million international passenger arrivals pass through customs. Miami came in second with 4.7 million and Los Angeles third with 4.1 million. But LAX seems to be the airport experiencing the longest delays and the most problems.

“When you have a plane in from British Air, one from Lufthansa, another from the Caribbean, one from the Middle East, and two that are delayed, we get crazed--we can’t recover from that kind of passenger load,” says Jane Arellano, assistant district director of examinations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles.

But what about those 70 inspection stations? The fact is, they have never been fully manned. The average staffing per hour for INS inspectors at LAX is only 19.

“It’s not our fault if all the airlines want to arrive at the same time,” says one INS official. “Sure there are the physical facilities to process passengers. But we don’t have the staff. It’s like someone built a 16-lane highway to be able to absorb the crunch during rush hour and then no one drives it the rest of the day. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Still, nothing angers passengers more than to arrive at an airport and see 51 empty inspection stations along with long lines of passengers waiting to be processed.

“No one wants to get people expedited to the United States faster than we do,” says Robert Moschorak, district director of the INS in Los Angeles. “People come to America and expect so much, and we want to give it to them. But to be stuck in a line for as long as two hours makes for some very dissatisfied visitors.”

Predictably, government officials blame the airlines, and vice versa.

“We have to do something about airline scheduling,” Moschorak says. “We have peak periods when things get pretty intense. On some days, we have 16,000 people come through LAX alone.”

The Air Transport Assn. blames the federal bureaucracy. The ATA wants the government to hire an additional 1,200 inspectors. In addition, the airlines are lobbying the government to incorporate into U.S. law the current 45-minute international standard for processing incoming passengers.

“But we are spread out pretty thin,” says the INS’ Moschorak. “We just don’t have enough staff.”

Already, President Bush has signed a trade bill that allocates $38 million for additional Customs Service inspectors, but it still is not enough to solve the problem.

What about pre-clearance?

Presently, passengers entering the United States from Canadian airports, the Bahamas, Bermuda and some other Caribbean nations are pre-cleared by U.S. Customs and Immigration officials stationed in those countries. When they arrive in the United States, they only need to pick up their baggage and leave.

A few years ago, the United States tested some pre-clearance airports in Europe. In 1986, the INS conducted a four-month pre-clearance test in Shannon, Ireland. A similar test was done in Oslo with SAS passengers flying from Norway to JFK.

Both tests were successful. But nothing was implemented.

Why? Lack of funds to support Customs and INS staff overseas.

But now, the pre-clearance idea is taking off again, and not a moment too soon.

United Airlines has begun a test program to ease entry pains for U.S.-bound passengers from Tokyo. Passenger information is printed on a machine-readable card, which is recorded at check-in and then sent by computer to the U.S. Customs Service in Los Angeles or San Francisco while the plane is en route.

Upon arrival, passengers use their cards and go through an express lane. (JAL is testing this system as well.)

On Sept. 25, another four-month pre-clearance test began for U.S.-bound passengers at both Heathrow and Gatwick airports in London.

Unfortunately, it is a selective test and not all airlines or flights are involved. For example, from Heathrow to JFK, only eight flights--Pan Am flights 001 and 101, TWA flights 701 and 703, British Airways flights 175 and 177 and two Concorde flights--are involved. From Gatwick to Los Angeles, Virgin Flight 007 is being tested.

“It’s been fantastic,” reports Mackenzie Grant, Virgin Airlines’ vice president for North America. “We’re so excited about it that we want them to make it permanent.”

As in previous tests, U.S.-bound passengers on Virgin clear customs in London and board their plane. When they land in Los Angeles, there’s no waiting in any line.

“They head straight for the baggage carousels and get their luggage,” Grant says. “On some days, we’ve had passengers land, get their bags and be out of the terminal in 15 minutes.”

Now that’s a great welcome to America.