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Airport measures
get smooth launch
Customs officials cope
with new security rules
Safoko Kyozuk and Chika Kuroda of Osaka, Japan, breezed through customs at Honolulu Airport so fast yesterday they still had enough energy to shop at Ala Moana Center.
But Yasuko Nakano and Atsuko Tokushige of Fukuoka, Japan, who were on a planeload of tourists who had to wait an hour to get through customs yesterday, had less energy.
"The wait was a little too long," Nakano said.
Overall, it was a relatively smooth start to a new U.S. Department of Homeland Security policy that requires all international visitors to be photographed and fingerprinted upon arrival in the country. Visitors from Canada are exempted. The fingerprints and photographs are taken digitally.
Some members of the state's visitor industry were spooked that the changes could increase waiting times for international visitors who just finished lengthy flights and hurt interest in Hawaii.
But passengers arriving yesterday faced waits about the same length as before the change.
Passengers from one of 18 planes of international visitors arriving in Honolulu yesterday had to spend up to an hour standing in line to clear customs, but most others breezed through.
"They did a phenomenal job (yesterday) and it had to be crazy down there," said Marsha Wienert, the state's tourism liaison.
Under the new program, all international visitors, including those from Japan, Hawaii's biggest international visitor market, must face additional scrutiny designed to weed out terrorists.
The change means that customs agents in Honolulu have gone from processing about 600 visitors a day to about 4,250, an increase of more than 600 percent.
Wait times to conclude the procedures are estimated to grow to an average of an hour or longer from about 45 minutes, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Yesterday, Customs processed 4,700 international arrivals between 5 and 11 a.m. with an average wait time of 30 minutes, but some passengers waited up to 60 minutes, and some as little as 20 minutes, said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
Between 9 and 10 a.m., eight flights arrived and customs agents had to process 2,000 passengers at once, he said.
"There was even one eight-minute span where they processed 1,100 passengers," Ishikawa said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened all 52 entry booths, but the state did not have to open the Aloha lounges that were set aside to make waiting more comfortable, Ishikawa said.
Honolulu still hasn't felt the full brunt of international arrivals, which are forecast to rise to as many as 6,500 visitors a day during early October, Wienert said.
"It will be a challenge to accommodate 6,500 passengers," she said. "But we developed our plan to accommodate the worst-case scenario."
If long waits begin to come into play the state will open the lounges and Customs can require that airlines start staggering flights, she said.
Increasing the wait times for international visitors is a concern for Hawaii since the state's economy depends so much on these arrivals, Wienert said.
"The international visitor market is very fragile," Wienert said. "They can travel anywhere they want to in the world, so we want to make their entry as smooth as possible."
www.dhs.gov
