Newark Airport misfires with delays at customs
https://fredericksburg.com/spo...d5-cc5012868919.htmlKen Perrotte: Newark Airport misfires with delays at customs
BY KEN PERROTTE/FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR 14 hrs ago
This may land me on some “Hassle Forever” list but beware Newark airport if you are a United States’ citizens traveling internationally to hunt.
My return flight from South Africa earlier this month aboard United Airlines’ new nonstop service from Johannesburg to Newark included a more than two-hour layover, realizing clearing customs and getting firearms rechecked for domestic flights home can sometimes take an hour or more.
Clearly, more time is needed in Newark.
Upon landing, you deplane, clear passport control and retrieve luggage for rechecking domestically. Firearms are handled separately, collected at an oversized-luggage area. Usually, you take your gun case, your passport and your CBP Form 4457 (Certificate of Registration for Personal Effects Taken Abroad) to an officer who verifies the gun you’re bringing back is the one you left the country with.
Getting this Form 4457 is inconvenient. You must take your gun(s) to a port of entry well before leaving the country to have a CBP officer crosscheck serial numbers and stamp and sign the form. For me, it meant a 120-mile roundtrip to the Richmond airport.
Once screened, you are usually released with an airline employee to get the locked case to TSA for final inspection and check in to your next flight.
This doesn’t happen in Newark. Instead, passengers with firearms wait until all gun and archery cases are off the plane and loaded onto luggage trollies, a process that took well over 30 minutes. A CBP officer collected and retained our passports and documentation. We were escorted to the inspection area and told to wait until called.
Over the next hour-plus, guns were inspected. Instead of being released to passengers as they were cleared, cases were loaded back on the trollies. Nobody could claim their case and get it to TSA. Instead, it was a repeat of the full troop movement from baggage claim to inspection.
The excessive delay, coupled with confiscated passports, felt like some sort of detention.
Arriving at the TSA checkpoint, we were ordered to unlock our gun cases and simply leave. Another unfamiliar practice. It was moot by then. My other bag was already on my connecting flight, leaving in 10 minutes from another terminal. Many people missed connections. I spent an extra seven hours in Newark. I could have driven home faster.
A Pattern of Delays
Associates flying into Newark from Africa that week reported similar systematic delays.
One friend said, “Traveling home through Newark was the worst part of the entire process,” adding it was even more difficult than getting guns into South Africa.
Wisconsin outdoor writer Kristin Alberts also reported prolonged hassles.
“The CBP was very inefficient but got us all through in about an hour-plus. TSA demanded the locks be undone. They took all the guns in a back hallway and wouldn’t allow any of us to witness what was happening. I said I wanted to stay with my case until it was relocked. They indicated I could stay in the police room indefinitely if I didn’t comply. I’ll never fly through Newark again!” she said.
“Further, CBP gave me a big hassle because the bolts weren’t removed from my rifles,” Alberts continued. “I explained three different times that you can’t remove a bolt from a lever-action without disassembling the whole gun, which I believe they actually wanted me to do. Another guy traveling with a bow got a worse hassle than we did with rifles. They took his passport and left him standing there for two hours.”
I asked CBP, TSA and United Airlines about this process.
Robert Einhorn, United’s New York and New Jersey public relations manager, said he checked with the local team and the firearms process at Newark is run by CBP and TSA. “I’m unable to provide insight on why or how they cleared the firearms,” Einhorn stated.
Anthony Bucci, a public information officer with the New York/Newark CBP, said the firearms process at Newark changed following a January 2017 mass shooting in the Fort Lauderdale airport’s baggage claim area. Previously, the firearms process at Newark required passengers to retrieve firearms at a baggage carousel and proceed to CBP for examination, he said.
“As a result of this incident, Newark re-examined all security protocols,” Bucci said. “The firearms examination process was revised to the current procedure which requires that all firearms checked in by passengers remain in the custody of the airline to be presented to CBP by an airline representative for examination.”
“The officer will conduct system inquires of both the firearm and passenger,” Bucci said. “Once satisfied, CBP will give the firearm back to the airline representative. If the passenger is connecting to onward travel, the airline will return the firearm to the baggage re-check area. If Newark is the passenger’s final destination, the airline will return the firearm to the passenger once they have exited the Federal Inspection Site.”
Bucci said CBP doesn’t require all firearms be transported at once and the agency doesn’t restrict the number of airline representatives who may present firearms for examination. He said my travel date saw an “inordinate number of passengers traveling with firearms, in connection with a safari hunting expedition,” a number far exceeding that normally arriving on a flight at Newark.
“Since the firearms were all presented by a single airline representative, once the firearms were presented to CBP for inspection, the airline representative had to wait for all firearms to clear the CBP process,” he said.
I counted three United employees in the inspection area. And, while United Airlines just began offering this flight in late spring of 2021, flights from Johannesburg throughout Africa’s busy hunting season routinely carry many hunters.
Finger Pointing
While Bucci said there is no requirement for all firearms to be transported at once, United’s Einhorn said the process is done by jointly by CBP and TSA. “As the airline we don’t have control over the process. You’d have to follow-up with CBP to understand any breakdown in the process,” he said.
This seems to be a bit of finger pointing between CBP and the airline.
United’s customer service personnel distributed forms advising passengers how to register complaints with CBP. One supervisor said the airline had been pleading for process changes to make things easier and faster.
The truth is out there, as the old X-Files television show used to say. Unless things change, one likely truth is that traveling hunters will avoid Newark, meaning United might lose desperately needed passengers, including those who routinely fly in upgraded classes of service.
I realize most people reading this probably aren’t traveling to Africa with guns, but you may fly somewhere with guns eventually. If you’re an American hunter, recreational or competition shooter, being forewarned of problematic airports—like Newark—means being forearmed.
Ken Perrotte: Outdoors@FreeLanceStar.com
