Welcome to the United States of America! Be Patient!

Over the past three years, we have been splitting our time between Asia and America, using two bases - Hong Kong and New York. We haven't really spent that much time in either city because our work means that we travel almost six months a year. Going in and out of the United States as often as we do, we have noticed how entering the country has become more and more of a nuisance. The immigration and customs procedures at New York (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX) and Chicago (ORD) can be quite tedious, particularly for a foreigner arriving on a foreign carrier that is normally filled with other foreigners (The planes of American carriers tend to have more Americans on them).

To be sure, other airports around the world are nowhere near as smooth sailing as either Singapore or Hong Kong. (We should note that Globophobe has the advantage of holding a permanent Hong Kong ID card so we can breeze through immigration at Chek Lap Kok.) Heathrow can be horrible for most of the day as this youtube.com clip amply demonstrates. At peak times, Tokyo, Beijing and India's main airports - Delhi and Mumbai - can be frustrating. But we dread the US airports more than the others for three reasons.

First, the climate of fear in America is such that any arrival feels very much under suspicion. The US has tightened its visa policies and requires most foreigners to be digitally fingerprinted and photographed. Making matters worse, homeland security officers are typically humorless, even rude, but the visitor dares not say anything critical or mildly sarcastic in case it should jeopardize entry.

More troubling is the second reason why we find US airports a pain: US immigration officers seem less and less skilled. We have found from our experience that more officers do not even know basic rules. Globophobe travels on a Canadian passport but several times we have encountered immigration agents who do not understand the special relationship that the US and Canada have and the conditions that apply to Canadian visitors, eg in most cases, they do not need to acquire a visa before arrival. We have on a couple of occasions been required by an officer to fill in an I-94 form, which Canadians generally do not need to complete to gain entry. On other occasions, when entering on a J-1 "exchange visitor" visa, the officer simply did not know how to process such an arrival and gave up, leaving the task to the secondary inspectors in the back room. One time, we ourselves had to instruct an officer on how to process our papers. Initially, this young man wasn't even going to stamp our passport!

The third reason for our dislike of the US arrival process is that American airports typically are badly designed, uncomfortable and not really user-friendly. There are exceptions, of course. We prefer to arrive at Newark's Liberty International over JFK - it's more spacious and airy and the queues seem to move more quickly. If JFK it has to be, then it is usually better to arrive at one of the newer terminals such as T4. It can be much more pleasant to fly into a little used international gateway. We once flew into Las Vegas on a Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo and zoomed through immigration, baggage claim and customs. But for the most part, the poor design of US airport terminals contributes to the slow processing. There are also other problems such as the lack of immigration officers and the occasional computer glitch (read this wire story on yahoo.com).

Because of all these difficulties, it is wise to allocate at least two hours to transit through an American airport. Three or more hours would be much better - and safer - to allow for late arrival, processing delays, terminal transfer if necessary, and security. If you have too tight a transit and miss your connection, you may encounter difficulties, particularly at this time of year when flights are full. Fail to make a flight and you may have to wait hours, maybe even a day or more, to get on the next one.

US authorities should learn a lesson from the debacle at Heathrow. London's gateway has gained a bad reputation among passengers, even though statistics suggest that some of the gripes are unfair. (Read this Economist article on "Britain's Awful Airports".) Thank goodness that Heathrow's Terminal 5 will be opening early next year. (Check out this youtube.com clip to see how the state-of-the-art terminal looks.) Before the situation seriously deteriorates in the main American gateways, the US should look at how they can make the passenger's arrival a more comfortable and efficient process. If the US government is determined to be less welcoming to foreigners, at least they should make those who do arrive at their doorstep and gain entry feel like guests and not intruders.

The Saga of the Lost Bag - and What to Do About Delayed Luggage

As Globophobe's loyal readers (all three of you!) know, we travel a great deal. Currently, we are at the tail end of a business trip that started in mid-May. Not to bore you or dazzle you with our itinerary, but suffice it to say that we have been bouncing between continents and have touched down in Asia (including the Middle East) three times, Europe three times (four before we're through), Africa once, and in between managed to spend four days back in the US - three in Washington, one in New York. On that one day in New York, we barely managed to get a some laundry done and to do some necessary errands such as pay bills. The last two months have been a whirl.

The most testing part of the trip was the two weeks during which we were minus our bag of clothes. In mid-June, as mentioned, we went back to the US for a few days and then had to rush back to Asia. We tried to get on a non-stop flight from New York to Singapore so we could have some time to recuperate on arrival before getting down to business but the Singapore Airlines flight we wanted was fully booked. So instead, we took a gamble. The plan seemed simple on paper: use four separate tickets to travel from New York to Singapore via London Heathrow, Shanghai Pudong and Hong Kong. All the transit times between flights were generous enough and we were even ready for the possibility that a British Airways agent in London might contend that we would need a visa to transit in Shanghai. We xeroxed the pertinent transit rules from the Chinese Foreign Ministry website and carried a paper ticket that indicated that we were booked on a flight to Hong Kong within 48 hours of arriving from London.

Still, we were worried so for the first flight out of New York, we packed our one check-in bag only with clothes. We also decided to wear business attire (suit, tie, leather shoes, dress shirt, cuff links) on board. At the British Airways check-in counter, we presented all four of our tickets, as well as a summary of the itinerary with the respective locator numbers for each leg of the journey. The check-in was fairly simple. The agent tagged the one bag all the way to Singapore but she had to put two tags on the bag because one tag can only accommodate three flight segments. We expressed some concern to her, but she said that this was not unusual and that there should be no problem.

If the bag made all the conections it was supposed to. But we were flying out of New York's JFK on what had been a rainy day. A backlog of flights had piled up and BA182 was more than three hours late departing for London. We arrived at Heathrow more than two hours behind schedule. Globophobe rushed through the Terminal 4 security but got to the gate for the flight to Shanghai just minutes after the flight had closed. The bag of course could never have made the half-hour transit even if Heathrow were operating at optimum efficiency - London's "premier" airport just ain't Changi or Chek Lap Kok. If you're ever on a bus between terminals, check out all the random piles of tagged bags strewn all over the place. Heaven knows how many bags are just lying in luggage limbo at LHR.

After missing the connection to Shanghai, BA made us go through an excruciatingly long queue at the "Flight Connections" counter. We tried approaching "Customer Service" but they provided no customer service. Only the Connections counter could make changes to passenger travel. Once we got to the counter, an agent put us on a flight to Hong Kong; all the flights to Singapore were apparently full. We were actually pleased by this turn of events since we would arrive in Hong Kong in time to catch our original flight to Singapore. The agent told us that since we had three hours before the Hong Kong flight left, it was possible that our bag would be retagged and put on the flight with us. Yeah right, we thought. Fat chance of that. Still, if the bag was put on the next flight to Shanghai the following day, it would arrive in Singapore only a day late.

That was not to be. We got to Hong Kong ahead of schedule. But when we got to the gate from where our Cathay Pacific flight to Singapore was leaving, the agent there refused to let us board. We could not travel without our checked bag, she insisted. The BA agent in London had put us on a later CX flight to Singapore. If our bag made it on the BA flight to HK then it would be on that flight. So we waited and got on the later CX flight. Once in Singapore, however, there was of course no bag. We were late for a dinner engagement so we asked the CX ground staff to handle the lost bag report. We went to our meeting, thinking that the worst thing that could happen would be for our bag to be 24 hours behind.

Wishful thinking. A day passed and there was no bag. Another day, no bag. And no service. CX, the last carrier we flew, was silent on offering compensation or money to buy emergency clothing. Phone calls to "their" baggage service led us to a company called SATS, the CX ground services agent in Singapore. It was not until the day we were to leave Singapore - four days after arrival - that we received an offer of SGD150 to buy clothes and other necessities. This was hardly sufficient. Neither SATS nor CX bothered to call. Instead, we had to call them to check for any update. We could use an online "tracer" service but it gave no indication of where the bag could be. The night we left Singapore for Stockholm via a Qantas flight to London, we went shopping at Changi with the SGD150 and bought a pair of shoes, two shirts, trousers and a coat (necessary for the cold nights in rural Sweden). We ended up spending about USD200 more than the emergency funds.

Once we got to Sweden, we called SATS. Still no bag. The company promised to call us every day with an update. We got no such calls. We were promised an additional SGD100 but as we were in a country with no CX office there was no way we could receive the funds. A week and a half after the bag was lost, just as we were giving up hope, we received an email from a China Eastern baggage service person at Shanghai Pudong. He had apparently found our bag, which had been put on a flight to Shanghai five days after it landed in London. Ryan of China Eastern spotted our email address on our luggage name tag and took the liberty of contacting us. He offered to send the bag to Hong Kong or Singapore. We emailed him back to ask him to send it to Hong Kong, our next destination. We called CX and SATS and they continued to be oblivious, doing nothing to find the bag or to help us out. Cathay kept passing the buck to SATS and SATS could not have cared less about a CX passenger; they are not an airline. Singapore efficiency? Well, not quite.

We should point out here that Globophobe is a Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Club gold card holder - oneworld sapphire, to those who keep track of these things - which means that we flew more than 60,000 miles on CX and other oneworld carriers last year. Did that "elite" status mean we got better service from Cathay? Not at all. Just the run around and promises to call back that were never kept. The only way we got things done such as the payments or SATS staff to call us back was by shouting, lecturing and cajoling the Cathay staff into action. We did more to retrieve our bag then the CX and SATS staff did. They had no idea the bag was in Shanghai, while all the time we were in communication with China Eastern.

When we got to Hong Kong, on the spur of the moment, we decided to fly down to Singapore. We would pick up the errant bag later, we thought. Before boarding the plane, however, we managed to get CX to pony up the additional SGD100. We went shopping at Hong Kong airport and again went beyond the budget by about USD45. We sent a chaser email to Ryan to find out about the bag, but heard nothing. The day after we got to Singapore, he emailed to say that the bag would be on a China Eastern flight to Hong Kong that afternoon. Great - we were to fly back up to Hong Kong the next day and would finally be reunited with our bag two weeks after it had gone astray. Thank you, Ryan of China Eastern! Who says that China's carriers don't provide good service?

That Friday, just as we were about to pack for the flight, we received a call from SATS. We have your bag! Now this was confusing. We thought our bag would be in Hong Kong, but now here it was in Singapore. When we got to Changi, we had SATS deliver the bag up to the Cathay check-in counter. It was indeed our long-lost High Sierra backpack! The double tags from BA in New York were still on it. There was no evidence of China Eastern's involvement. But there it was - in good order and with everything inside (the bag was unlocked).

We repacked at the CX counter so all our new clothes fit into the prodigal bag and a rollerbag which we usually carry on board but which we were using as a check-in bag to carry liquids. At the counter, we saw the agent making calculations, adding up the weights of the two bags. We explained the saga of the lost bag and said that there was no way we would be paying any excess baggage charge. He was sympathetic and rejigged the weights so we could board our CX flight to HK in peace.

So after two weeks of washing our clothes every night, we found what was lost and arrived back in Hong Kong with an expanded traveling wardrobe and a tale of woeful service to tell.

Moral of the story:
1. If you lose your bag, you're practically on your own. Keep pestering the last airline you flew. They are responsible even if they were not the ones that misplaced your bag. Particularly if they rely on ground service agents, service is more than likely to be poor or non-existent. Do not rely on anyone. Keep badgering them.

2. Demand compensation money - emergency funding - immediately. If you have arrived in your home city, the airline may be reluctant to pay up. So if you can provide an alternative home address, then do so. Get as much as you can and ask for more every few days. The airline will have to pony up. (They should also give you an amenities kit to tide you over for at least one night.) Once they promise funds, keep them to that promise and get them to deliver the cash to you as soon as possible.

3. Keep receipts and records of everything you had to purchase due to your lost bag including toiletries and phone calls. Don't go on a spending spree on the assumption that the airline will reimburse you for everything. Be reasonable and you will more than likely be compensated. Some airlines will be more generous than others. When we were stranded in Halifax after 9/11, Singapore Airlines - bless their hearts - paid for a nice hotel room (after we spent two nights in an emergency shelter) and whatever clothes we had to buy. No questions asked.

3. Make sure your name and contact information is on your bag and IN your bag. Include our email address. Tape your business card to an obvious place inside your packed bag so that the card is immediately visible to anybody who should open it.

4. Even after you get your bag, put in for a compensation claim. The airline's liability is limited, but you should claim what you can. If the bag never turns up, then you can also make a separate claim for the loss. Treat the delay and the loss as SEPARATE issues. You should get compensation for both the delay and the loss. Don't forget to claim the cost of the bag, as well as the contents. Note, however, that the airline is not responsible for valuable items unless it is informed that they are in your bag and have agreed in advance to compensate you in case of their loss (not likely).

5. Avoid Heathrow. LHR is now THE transit blackspot of international travel. Stay away! If you are heading to or through Europe, try a more efficient and user-friendly transfer point such as Munich or Helsinki. LHR is not the only problem airport. Apparently Copenhagen's Kastrup has also been flagged by travellers as a troubled port of call. A lot depends on the time of day you are travelling. We went through LHR en route to Sweden at 6 am and it was a breeze. Still, the baggage handling difficulties at Heathrow have created literally a mound of problems for the BAA management. Heathrow had to send a few thousand bags to Milan to have them sorted! Who would have thought that the British would be going to the Milanese to bring order to chaos???????