If you’re on a domestic flight, you can usually taxi, gather your luggage and be on your way in a reasonable amount of time – figure 30 minutes, give or take, if all goes well.
If you’re coming in on an international flight though, you can add a significant amount of time to your wait, since you and your stuff have to go through customs/immigration.
Blacklane, a German chauffeur company that arranges airport transfers in over 300 cities, analyzed hundreds of thousands of its airport pickups over the course of 9 months. They compared when the flights arrived to when the passengers entered its vehicles and were able to determine the fastest and slowest airports in the world.
These are their findings for the 20 slowest international arrivals:
The slowest airport in the world to exit for international arrivals is KIX Kansai, in Japan. If you land there as an international arrival, you can expect to spend 80.5 minutes at the airport before leaving. It should be noted that KIX has the longest airport terminal in the world (it’s 1.1 miles [1.7 km] long), which does add significant travel time.
The slowest airport in the U.S. for exit time was #4 on the list – at a median time of 53.5 minutes, that “honor” went to MCO Orlando International Airport, in Orlando FL. Yee-ha for my hometown airport! But honestly, I’m not the least bit surprised – I have friends and acquaintances who come to MCO internationally and the wait for them can sometimes take forever.
Other U.S. cities that made the list of slowest international arrivals include:
05. (part of a 4-way tie) IAD – Washington D.C. – 53 minutes
12. (part of a 2-way tie) HNL – Honolulu – 50 minutes
12. (part of a 2-way tie) LAX – Los Angeles – 50 minutes
16. (part of a 4-way tie) SAN – San Diego – 47 minutes
20. (part of a 5-way tie) DEN – Denver – 46 minutes
20. (part of a 5-way tie) MIA – Miami – 46 minutes
According to the study, many of the world’s slowest airports for arriving international travelers can be found in the largest cities – Tokyo had the two slowest, and it was in the company of Buenos Aires, Colombo, Dubai, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, Santiago, Shanghai and, from the U.S., Los Angeles.
The results of the entire study can be found here.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
4 comments
Even if you have Global Entry , IAD is slow becasue:
1) Once the Global Entry kiosks run out of paper, the CBP people refuse to put paper in them becasue its beneath their lofty job responsibilities of protecting Americans from Al Qaeda and
2) Baggage service is abysmal
re: #1….Snort! 😉
I guess you haven’t been to LaGuardia recently.
Wondering what happened to Seattle in this list. Routine waits of two hours for non-US pax to get to immigration. It’s scandalous – accepting flights without the capacity to handle them.