Comments

1. GE finalizing of enrollment on day of departure from the US/US airport is a great convenience and should also make things more efficient than waiting for an appointment slot or enrollment on arrival.

   This was an idea being put into consideration back during the Obama Admin, but CBP was able to sell that it had other priorities and resource constraints and thus this was pushed off. Glad to see it come into play now, but let’s see how sustained an effort this will be.

2. How Boeing lost it’s way ? Perhaps : non-engineer managers ; out-of-touch managers ; self-interested managers ; full-of-themselves managers ; MBA managers ; spread-sheet managers ?
   Helpful solution : Nuts and Bolts Engineer Managers on the factory floor ?

3. The entire GE interview / approval mechanism has for years been bizarrely, inexplicably out of sync with consumer demand. It’s insane that there are no bookable interview slots in New York or Chicago for the next year, but if you can get yourself to Derby Line, VT or International Falls, MN they can see you at noon today.

4. Never, ever forget or let Boeing forget that the former CEO bragged — BRAGGED — about refocusing the company so that it listened less to engineers and more to the MBAs.

5. Too bad tarring and feathering has gone out of style…because there should be a few former McD-D leadership receiving that treatment for what they did to Boeing post-merger!

6. A mummified monkey meal from the Democratic Republic of Congo might be the preferred first-class food option to replace the American Airlines shelf-stable pasta. Please let me know what wine the American Airlines master sommelier recommends pairing with African bush monkey meat to create a memorable wine experience during Flagship dining or a first-class in-flight meal.

7. It’s criminally sad how far Boeing has gone from the pre-merger days to now, before management moved HQ to Chicago to escape the haranguing of those pesky engineers with their annoying safety concerns.

8. “Washington Dulles airport now has walk-in Global Entry interviews, for when you’ve been conditionally approved online.”

   Walk-in? Well, that’s assuming there’s no line. Don’t you run the risk of missing your flight (or connecting flight)? CBP isn’t known for its efficiency.

9. As long as people realize this does NOT apply at all GE enrollment centers.
   Most are by appointment only and are booked out for months.
   VERY popular program with free TSA precheck included for only $100 for 5 years.

10. Solid GE news, that makes a lot of sense so I’m glad they made it happen.

    Wenover is one of my favorite channels, a great listen even if I was hoping they’d touch on a little more into the safety exemptions so I could learn more about that history

11. Global Entry at Dulles isn’t exactly the best. We had decided to throw AmEx points at VA Upper Class, which meant flying out of JFK or IAD instead of our home airport of MSP. Since IAD required that we use less points and my family is in the DC area, that made more sense for us, so that’s where we booked. Flight out no problem – yay for VA Upper Class tickets speeding you through LHR immigration! – and we expected to move through Immigration pretty quickly when we returned to IAD mid-week during a non-peak travel time. We had both lived in the DC area and travelled internationally then, and in the past, had not found Immigrations there terribly onerous. Clearly, things had changed in the past decade or so.

    We get to the kiosks and are triggered for an interview – we weren’t surprised since we’d been gone a month and figured that might trip something, and we had some souvenirs/gifts to declare. But it turns out *everyone* who went to a GE kiosk from the 3 flights that had arrived around the same time were referred for the secondary interview…even if they had nothing to declare. Not a single person was cleared to leave without an interview.

    CBP only had a single agent who ended up very slowly asking every single question to each person in the party one at a time – it was like the old Bob & Ray “Slow Talkers of America” bit. Meanwhile, everyone in the line had time to observe how very empty the regular Immigration area was, staffed with tons of agents who moved people along really efficiently. It took us nearly an hour to clear the line, it was ridiculous.

    And then there are those images from early January with immigration lines snaking through the airport because CBP had provided only one agent! (Look for the January 5th roundup on this site – you can search on “immigration”.)

    So I’m not exactly holding my breath that this pilot program will be well-handled at Dulles.

12. The Global Entry enrollment process is badly broken. I couldn’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for an interview because I can’t remember that far back. I also can’t seem to find a valid purpose for the ordeal no matter how much I read up on the subject.

    I could understand, in theory, why it could make sense to have an interview for TSA PRE. After all, you are going on an airplane and they want to make sure that you are not a risk. But GE is for people returning to their own country who have an absolute right to enter anyway. It means using a kiosk similar to what I might use when entering any number of countries as a tourist, despite them not requiring any interview.

    It means that instead of waiting in line for a person to scan my passport, who isn’t likely to ask me much if anything, I could scan it myself and it could use a photo to verify me. But if the idea is to keep out anybody who isn’t verified, how does that help? If somebody steals my passport, they aren’t verified. If they can fool a screening that takes a photo, or fail to fool it, verifying me becomes a moot point. It doesn’t prove that I don’t have extra cash or a ripe mango hidden in my backpack.

    Verification is supposed to be done when I get a passport in the first place. That’s what passports are for.

13. We got GE at the Customs house in Norfolk. Short drive from Richmond. We had same day approval. Came back to Dullas at 3 am, went to GE line done in under a minute. It is a great thing even for people who go out of the country a few times a year. A must for the international business traveler.

14. These security programs are basically an easy way for the government to run a background check on you, who you are as a person in society and know where you’re going at all times. And give them money for doing that.