These Customs Can Be Far From Quaint for Passengers Returning Home : Airports: Processing U.S. citizens after international flights often took up to two hours last year. LAX had some of the longest delays. New procedures are helping.

Few travel experiences can be as infuriating as arriving home after a long international flight, only to have to wait to clear both U.S. Customs and Immigration. Yet that’s exactly what thousands of Americans have endured in recent years, as airport facilities and federal agencies strain to handle the loads of passengers.

Consider these statistics: Between 1985 and 1990, international arrivals at U.S. airports grew more than 50%. Last year, more than 47 million international arriving passengers were processed at U.S. airports.

In 1990, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), it was not at all unusual for arriving passengers at virtually every major U.S. gateway airport to be delayed in processing lines for up to two hours. At some airports, including LAX, the waits were as long as five hours.

“I don’t know a single airline,” said Michael Tan, deputy managing director of Singapore Airlines, “that’s happy with the current U.S. system of processing passengers.”

There are those who think that during the Persian Gulf crisis, passenger processing went from bad to worse. Citing security concerns, the INS stopped the “citizen bypass” rule--which had allowed returning U.S. citizens to skip long Immigration lines and go directly through a U.S. Customs check. Since the beginning of this year, arriving U.S. passengers have had to pass through both Immigration and Customs inspections.

What adds insult to the injury of long lines is that--as part of their ticket price--passengers pay $5 each to be inspected by the INS.

The airports with the longest delays, according to information obtained from U.S. Customs, the INS and other federal agencies: New York’s John F. Kennedy, Miami, LAX and Honolulu. But Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle have also experienced lengthy delays in processing arriving passengers. Naturally, airports with a heavier volume of international flights tend to have the most problems.

The initial statistics for 1991 seem to indicate that passenger processing delays have been significantly reduced over the same period in 1990.

On July 30, for example, INS spokesman Duke Austin reports that no incoming international flights took more than an hour to process anywhere in the United States. On that day, at JFK, the INS instituted the ACE (Accelerated Citizen Evaluation) program, a procedure that the agency uses when the number of passengers exceeds an airport’s ability to process them in less than 45 minutes. Under the ACE program, if you are a U.S. citizen, INS agents quickly verify your documents and send you on to the Customs line. No long interrogations.

But reports compiled by the Air Transport Assn. of America, the Washington-based lobbying group for major U.S. airlines, indicate that July 30 may have been a very lucky Tuesday. Consider that on July 27, according to ATAA statistics--as supplied by the airlines themselves, it took U.S. Customs and Immigration officials at JFK an hour 31 minutes to clear KLM Flight 641; 1 hour 30 minutes to clear Air Afrique Flight 49, and 2 hours 10 minutes to process Air France Flight 77.

Last year, U.S. officials tested the concept of “pre-clearing” returning U.S. citizens on selected flights from London. According to INS, Customs and airline officials, the test--which processed passengers in London before the plane took off--was a resounding success.

been restarted.

In the meantime, the INS continues to use the ACE system when airports get crowded. And where ACE has been tried, statistics have shown that processing times have improved.

U.S. Customs has also worked to streamline its procedures. Over the past two years, Customs has been implementing a master plan for air passenger processing. The plan--which is in effect at 20 U.S. airports that account for more than 70% of the total air passenger volume--changes the method of processing air travelers from one-on-one interviews to a more selective examination process. At peak times, the agency is also using designated “rovers”--agents who position themselves at baggage carousels and clear selected passengers on the spot.

But not everybody is satisfied that progress has been made. “The problems of delays have by no means been reduced,” says George Howard, president of the Airport Operators Council International, which represents more than 250 airport operators worldwide. “We are far from reaching the 45-minute standard.” Howard says that the INS hasn’t hired enough inspectors, and wants the agency to consider using ACE as standard operating procedure, “not just when things get tough.”

The INS argues that it is working hard to meet its hiring targets. Detractors note that, new hires aside, there are obvious staffing problems. At Miami International Airport, there are 58 INS inspection booths. At LAX, there are 72. But at LAX, officials report that even at peak times, no more than 34 booths are ever staffed.

And airline schedules don’t help, since many airlines schedule a majority of their flights to land at peak hours. For example, at JFK, 73% of Pan Am’s daily international flights land within 57 minutes.

If your flight lands and you find yourself in a very long clearance line, what can you do?

For starters, ask an INS agent if his agency has implemented ACE, and, if not, ask to speak to a supervisor who can authorize it.

Then, once through INS, look for U.S. Customs agents near the baggage carousels, explain your predicament and hope that they’ll clear you right there.