31.10.2010 0:01, erilar kirjoitti:
In ,
"Jean wrote:

I will gladly take off my shoes for my (and other's) safety!

That's fine for young people, but until they give me a place to sit down
to take them off and another to put them back on, I'll continue to call
it age discrimination.

Transit scheme is dead at the US airports now. Transit passengers must
cross the border to the USA even if their next destination is abroad. In
the past you arrived in an airport and walked to a proper gate and flew
away.

Nowadays it is different and transit passengers arriving in USA from
abroad and departing from the same airport to a destination abroad take
following steps:

1. you must fill in so called "ESTA" application online (or have a visa)
which is good for two years.

2. At the airport you have a prefilled document for the immigration (you
go through the border to the US soil). Depending how busy the airport is
there may be a lengthy wait on queue until it will be your turn to
deliver finger prints.

3. The next process has been introduced last year and I don't have a
faintest idea what it has to do with "security":

Even if luggage is checked to the destination outside the USA it will be
collected by the owner at the US airport.

4. You walk to the customs (because you cross the border) a prefilled
document in hand. Some queueing may take place. Your belongings are or
are not checked. You walk through out from the customs area and there
you are - in the USA!

5. Because you don't mind to drag your heavy luggage, you leave it to
the luggage drop area.

Now you are ready to go back there where you just came from.

6. Because you are in an area of free access to anyone and you are going
to an area designated only to passengers with a valid ticket you must
queue once again as is usual in these days at airports: you leave the
USA so there will be a security check. While queueing there is probably
a sign somewhere telling our exhausted passenger to KEEP THINGS SIMPLE
and have the travelling documents in hand and wear off the shoes (the
floor is naturally quite filthy).


Has Osama bin Laden won the war against the American legislator and the
airport authority? He definitely has done so!

If one can decently fly in a route which does not include US American
ports then it should be used.