Asked by Cowen Securities
airline analyst Helane Becker during a July earnings call about Delta's new
Terminal 4 at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport, CEO Richard
Anderson said, "I think overall it's going well." But he had one significant
caveat: excessively long wait times for passengers arriving on international
flights, which he called "an embarrassment" to the country.
Media quickly latched onto
his criticisms that the government had failed travelers, and Anderson vowed to
pursue "every avenue in Washington and in Congress to get this problem
solved."
Opting instead for what Delta
senior vice president of New York Gail Grimmett called a "self-help
remedy," the airline recently fronted the funding for 40 automated passport
control machines, which arrived at the Terminal 4 arrivals facility on Monday.
After some quick tests, the machines were up and running on Tuesday.
Delta did not share the cash
value of its investment, but Grimmett said Delta "paid for the systems
upfront, and we're working with the Port Authority and JFK
IAT [International Air Terminal] to
figure out appropriate reimbursement." The terminal is a common-use
facility, so passengers arriving on other carriers also can make use of the
kiosks.
"We've invested too much
in that terminal and too much in the customer experience to not figure out a
self-help mechanism," she added. "Every week I get a list of the top
complaints we received for Terminal 4, and Customs and Border Protection was in
the top five. Everything else was easily manageable." Grimmett noted the
arrivals process "was a reflection" on Delta, even if the causes were
beyond its control and the solution heretofore largely out of its reach.
The APC machines are a new
feature in U.S. airports, first appearing this summer at Chicago O'Hare's
Terminal 5—with encouraging results.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
and the Chicago Department of Aviation in August said the new O'Hare machines would
"allow travelers to scan their own passport, complete their customs
declaration and confirm travel information using a self-service kiosk before
reaching the CBP officer to complete the inspection."
The technology "removes
the administrative responsibility for a CBP officer to scan a traveler's
passport and verify their paper customs declaration, reducing the time a
traveler spends with a CBP officer," according to CBP.
CBP claimed the kiosks in
Chicago led to a "40 percent decrease in wait times for U.S. citizens with
more than 60 percent of eligible travelers using the kiosks."
Though only U.S. citizens are
eligible to use those machines, "if it works appropriately, then you can
rebalance some of the headcount and how [CBP] works the booths," Grimmett
explained.
While the first day of APC
usage at JFK was "a light booking day" not representative of peak
operations, Grimmett was encouraged, noting the longest wait time on Tuesday
was 19 minutes. Still, she said the real test will come "during a peak
time period."
Delta hardly has been alone
in its frustration with the arrivals process.
The Global Gateway Alliance,
which "was established to address the major challenges facing the
metropolitan region's airports," in a report last month examining data
from June through August noted that "JFK has the longest average wait
time, longest average maximum wait time and longest wait time during peak
hours" among the five busiest international arrivals airports (also including
Miami, Los Angeles, Newark and Chicago O'Hare).
The report noted that at JFK
the "average maximum delay during peak hours in August
topped out at a whopping two hours."
GGA praised the addition of
automated passport scanning at JFK, but implored CBP and Congress to take additional
steps at the airport to further ease arrivals. That includes better staffing,
shifting customs agents between terminals to match passenger throughput and
"full federal funding for CBP."
The U.S. Travel Association
last month also harped on international arrivals into the United States. A report
issued by the group suggested the arrivals process in the United States is
deterring international travelers and will cost the United States $95 billion during
the next five years.