PHOENIX PHIL
AH ambassador
Folks,
I had to take one for the team at work and leave beautiful Phoenix in August and pay my dues by traveling to awful Switzerland last week........I know I know.......very big of me....... I traveled home this past Saturday flying into Dulles airport as my port of entry.
While I may have missed an announcement regarding the forms you normally fill out on return from foreign travel, from what I remember they usually hand these out and you fill them out whether you think you need to or not. I didn't even think about the fact that I hadn't as I left the airplane. So off the plane and I followed the sign for folks with connecting flights and into passport control area I went.
A relatively short duration getting through passport control, may be 10 minutes or so before I got to the CBP officer in the box. The officer asked me a question about what I had bought, I told him, but that it was in my checked bag which was of course through the next door. I thought that odd to be asked this as passport control but whatever. The officer replied welcome home, stamped my passport and sent me on my way.
On through the next door to the baggage carousel where I was happy to see a United airlines employee taking bags off the carousel and standing them to the side. I found my bag immediately and one I went expecting to next meet with a customs officer. But that didn't happen, the next stop was at another conveyor for rechecking your bags. Which I did and was now on my way to clearing security before moving into the terminal for my connecting flight.
Hey wait a minute.......what happened to the guy who may or may not want to look in my luggage? It didn't happen to me nor anyone else I could see. No one was being stopped. Has this become the normal procedure?
If so, what does this mean for those traveling with firearms? I'd like to hear what you guys who've been to Africa this year are experiencing on return, particularly if Dulles was your port of entry.
I had to take one for the team at work and leave beautiful Phoenix in August and pay my dues by traveling to awful Switzerland last week........I know I know.......very big of me....... I traveled home this past Saturday flying into Dulles airport as my port of entry.
While I may have missed an announcement regarding the forms you normally fill out on return from foreign travel, from what I remember they usually hand these out and you fill them out whether you think you need to or not. I didn't even think about the fact that I hadn't as I left the airplane. So off the plane and I followed the sign for folks with connecting flights and into passport control area I went.
A relatively short duration getting through passport control, may be 10 minutes or so before I got to the CBP officer in the box. The officer asked me a question about what I had bought, I told him, but that it was in my checked bag which was of course through the next door. I thought that odd to be asked this as passport control but whatever. The officer replied welcome home, stamped my passport and sent me on my way.
On through the next door to the baggage carousel where I was happy to see a United airlines employee taking bags off the carousel and standing them to the side. I found my bag immediately and one I went expecting to next meet with a customs officer. But that didn't happen, the next stop was at another conveyor for rechecking your bags. Which I did and was now on my way to clearing security before moving into the terminal for my connecting flight.
Hey wait a minute.......what happened to the guy who may or may not want to look in my luggage? It didn't happen to me nor anyone else I could see. No one was being stopped. Has this become the normal procedure?
If so, what does this mean for those traveling with firearms? I'd like to hear what you guys who've been to Africa this year are experiencing on return, particularly if Dulles was your port of entry.