Customs wait times in Philly??

caaahyoko

My husband is coming into Philly from Brussels on Monday. His lay-over is only 2.5 hrs until his other plane departs LGA. Will that be enough time to get through customs in Philly? No, he's not carrying anything illegal. :P

Thanks in advance for info!

lilbangladesh

Let me get this straight. He's landing in Philly, and then he has 2.5 hours before his next plane leaves from LaGuardia? Even by Amtrak, NY is an hour and a half away.

daver

I'm thinking maybe the OP meant _for_ LGA...? And I have no idea how long customs takes in Philly, sorry.

lilbangladesh

Well, in that case, it should probably be fine. Even in this day and age, I've never had to wait long to go through customs. (Airport security is still a joke!) The only concern would be if the plane was late, which is more likely to happen than getting held up in customs.

caaahyoko

lilbangladesh wrote: Well, in that case, it should probably be fine. Even in this day and age, I've never had to wait long to go through customs. (Airport security is still a joke!) The only concern would be if the plane was late, which is more likely to happen than getting held up in customs.

Yeah, I think I'm getting the picture that the customs are the least of his worries. From what I've been reading, it seems that Philly is awful at getting you your baggage in under an hour or getting you through security in the same amount of time. On a couple websites, it looks like anyone with less than 2 hours never makes their flight, and anyone with less than 3 hours has a 50/50 chance.

But please, someone, let me know if you've had a better experience!

carnivore

If Philly is anything like JFK (and few places are that bad), the real holdup is immigration, not customs.
It's funny, when I travel by myself, I get stopped for a bag check just about every time, but when I travel with my wife I never do. Even with that, customs is usually faster than immigration. Although I had incredible luck on a recent flight when they had about 10 immigration agents for the U.S. citizens line and only one for the non-citizens line. It went very quickly, but I did feel pretty bad for all the people in the other line.

alafairnadia

immigration at JFK sucks. I much prefer newark. in july I went to london, flew biz class - in london I got to go in the special line for biz/first class ppl and made it through immigration in a heartbeat. was awesome. on the way back, I spent an hour in line, twitching to check my bberry, before I finally got speedily cleared. hatez jfk.