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TECH TRENDS 22 airportbusiness May 2014 "Their customs wait times were the worst in the country," says Steve Sigmund, executive director of the Global Gateway Alliance, an advocacy organization founded by chairman Joseph Sitt to address major challenges facing metropolitan airports in New York and New Jersey. Sadly the scenario at JFK is far from unique. Many gateway airports across the United States experience the same serious delays on a daily basis. "Bottlenecking at U.S. Immigration has caused long pas- senger wait times—up to three to four hours at times—as well as costly flight delays and stress on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff and systems," says Sean Farrell, head of portfolio management at SITA, an international provider of global information and telecommunications solu- tions for the air transport industry. He mentions that the situation got so bad at some airports that people waited for hours to get through immigration, and at times had to be kept O fficials at John F. Kennedy International Airport knew they had a problem in inter- national Terminal 4. Customs lines were ever-long and wait times were averag- ing two hours and sometimes extending up to as many as five. By Ronnie L. Garrett Block the Customs Bottleneck Airports have discovered the best way to alleviate customs wait times is through a combination of technology and manpower Orlando International Airport became one of the first to adopt SITA Phase III kiosk technology. airb_22-25_TechTrendsCustoms.indd 22 5/2/14 9:51 AM