There is no line for GE, at least not at Newark and other major airports I’ve entered through. You just go up to a kiosk, scan your face, take the printout and exit. Immigration and customs all taken care of, in literally 2-3 minutes.
(For reference, I make 3-4 international trips every year)
Yes, it was kind of wild that I didn’t even have to show my GE card, my face was just scanned.
The first time I got to use my Global entry was returning from Mexico last year, through Houston. If I had a $1 for every time I heard “I’ve never, EVER, seen lines this long!” I’d be rich. Mostly flight crew and other experienced travelers. We did the screening on the machines then got into the twisting lines. It took about 30 minutes.
Then I got stalled for about 5 minutes after I went through the 2 second ‘interview’ because as I exited and had to go through rescreening, they had blocked off the walkway to let people cross over from one side to the other (You know, those ‘regular’ travelers without Global entry) as they were trying to redistribute the load. I will say I was quicker with GE than my friends who were in the regular lines.
The nightmare continued as the security lines for transferring onto domestic flights was really long. Like 45 minutes long. They said 'Oh, if you have pre-check or GE you can go down this hallway to (some other) security. So I did. BIG mistake. It was a really long walk, and then when I got there the pre-check was closed (except for a foreign airline large group and their crew) and so the rest of us were crushed into another looping security line.
I barely made the connection and I had 2 hours. My friends made it but only because our flight was slightly delayed. I do believe I got my 25000 steps in that day. The year before re-entering through much smaller Austin, there was no one at the Global entry Kiosks so it would have taken just minutes, but the regular lines were only about 15 minutes.
4 hours should be plenty of time to clear customs and transfer to any flight in the airport.
I have used the MPC app. It lets you into shorter lines (often much shorter or empty).
However, they sometimes have only one agent servicing the MPC line. Once, that was the case, and I was the second in line. But the line did not move because the person at the agent apparently had a situation that was taking a long time for the agent to handle. The line only moved when another agent emptied the GE line and took people from the MPC line.
+1 on MPC if you don’t have GE. Last spring at JFK, our teenager used MPC and beat my wife & I (with GE) through the line.
My experience connecting international to domestic - as others have said, you will need to claim any checked luggage and clear US Customs & Immigration at your port of entry (Newark Airport). Once you have done that, you can visit the baggage re-check desk for your airline to drop your checked bag to your final domestic destination.
Here’s the tricky part - you will have to go through TSA security again to catch your domestic connection. Once you exit the Customs/Immigration area after rechecking your bag, you are now “landside” not “airside”, so you will have to proceed upstairs and go through security like you were taking a normal domestic flight. I got caught in Detroit with this once going from London to Omaha on Delta and it was a big pain.
In Miami they had one TSA checkpoint just for international arrivals.
In Chicago, you have to sprint across the airport and go through TSA checkpoints with everyone else.
Miami was a much better option.
Yes, that is because you could theoretically have moved prohibited-in-carry-on items from the checked bag to the carry-on bag.
I wasn’t at the Newark airport - I was speaking generally. And in my case, in Seattle.
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