There seems to be a lot of confusion among travelers about this. I don't know if this is naivete or just careless wording - but I see frequently see people asking about the time to get through customs.

To be clear, when flying into a country from outside the country (or zone) PEOPLE must go through IMMIGRATION. This is where you show your passport and frequently answer a question or two (purpose of visit, length of visit, etc). There are often lines for Immigration, depending on the number of planes that have just landed. The wait can be from a couple of minutes to an hour or more.

After you have cleared IMMIGRATION you go to pick up your luggage. If you have checked luggage this part of the process can take from a couple of minutes to, again, an hour or more - depending on how many planes have landed at once.

You then take your luggage and go through CUSTOMS. In many places (but not the US) you simply walk through the Green Nothing to Declare lane. So the Customs portion of the process usually takes about 1 minute.

In the US you need to stop and give the agent your Customs Declaration form (that you filled out on the plane). They usually glance at it and wave you through - but pick a small number of people to have their bags examined - usually on the basis of a particular profile. This profile may be way too much luggage (potential illegal immigrant), looking very scruffy and/or shifty (potential carrier of drugs) and VERY expensively dressed and declaring you have bought nothing (trying to avoid paying duty on expensive purchases). There are also a number of sniffer dogs that hang around the luggage carousel - looking for 1) drugs and 2) contraband food (much more common - and it will be seized and destroyed). Unless you are stopped this process rarely takes more than 5 minutes or so.

Perhaps this will clarify all of those people who want to know how long it will take to get out of the airport.

Uh a bit too much generalizing or perhaps just not clear on certain things...you do use the term zone somewhere in the post....in Europe a whole bunch of eu members as well as a couple of non eu members have joined together in an immigration pact (generally it is called the Schengen agreement) that they will have no border controls between themselves and that applies to airlines. So if you're flying from the airport of one signatory to this pact to another, say from France to Germany, there will be no immigration at the German airport. If you're flying from a non Schengen signatory, say the UK to Italy by way of Germany, you will go through schengen immigration in Germany and arrive at the Italian airport with no immigration. You will also check your luggage through and not have to pick it up in Germany and you will be required to go through Italian customs but the way they've organized the airports you might have to hunt for an Italian customs agent if you have something to declare after you pick up your luggage

When travelling into the USA, by law you clear immigration and customs at your first stop in the USA. So if you're flying to Los Angeles via New York, you can have your luggage tagged through to LAX but upon arrival at JFK, you do US immigration first, wait for your luggage to come through on the carousel, deal with the customs agent as noted and hand your luggage back to the airline just after customs/

Wonderful new service....clearing US customs and immigration in Ireland when leaving rather than at first stop in US. One wonders if the other European nations will eventually go to this.

Such a change from the circus that was Newark international arrivals in the past.

I remain confused about the process for US citizens. For example, a few yrs ago when we were departing Geneva and returning to the US, I was told by the BA agent at check-in that our luggage would go all the way to our final US destination. In London, I double checked with a British Air agent and was told that we would need to collect our luggage at JFK and take it through customs before continuing on to the final leg of our trip. Another official at JFK also confirmed this. But we waited and waited at the carousel and our luggage never appeared. It was checked through to our final destination as the original BA agent had told us it would be.

Our connecting flight out of JFK was tight time-wise so standing around waiting at the carousel for our luggage to appear was nerve wracking and a hassle.

When we fly to Amsterdam tomorrow and then take a connecting flight to Toulouse (same airline), we don't need to collect our checked luggage and go through Dutch customs with it do we? In fact, we don't go through Dutch customs at all since we're not leaving the airport- correct?

Assuming your bags are checked though you don't go through customs at Schiphol but you do go through immigration - passport control - since it is your point of entry into the Schengen zone.

calville, as clearly explained in the original post, you aren't going to go through CUSTOMS anywhere unless you have goods to declare (well, you'll pass by the Custom's area but unless you hand them a declaration or they pull you over for looking suspicious about bringing something into the country, it'll all take about 10 seconds and you won't even notice). You will go through IMMIGRATION.

And I would assume your luggage will be checked through to Toulouse.

OK thanks for your replies. So on our return home, we arrive in Atlanta and will not go through customs with our luggage- only immigration? Luggage is always checked through to our final destination? Sorry but it's still confusing to me.

Why did the BA agents in London and at JFK tell us that- are they confused too?

And it seems like sometimes we do have to go through US customs with luggage on our arrival into the US. Or maybe as the OP said, a lot of us are confusing immigration with customs.

By US law, you must clear US customs and immigration on your first stop in the USA no matter where your baggage is checked through to. I know how it works at JFK, it probably works very similarly at all other ports of entry.

At JFK, if you arrive on an international flight that is not pre-cleared (flights from Canada and some from Ireland are cleared before leaving, these countries have given up some of their soverignty to allow US immigration and customs agents to operate in their airports but on arrival in the USA, these flights are treated as domestic flights...) you must exit the plane even if it is listed as an intermediate stop...you will then follow an endless series of corridors to you reach US immigration. You will be separated into two groups, one for US citizens and permanet residents (green cards) and all others. For US citizens and residents, it's fairly straight forward. The agent scans your passport, may ask you a question or two such as like how long were you away, what countries did you visit and you're through. For visitors to our country, our immigration inspectors are so welcoming. Other than Canadian citizens, visitors are fingerprinted, photographed and have all sorts of other things done to them (they haven't gotten to the point of retina scdans...yet). In any event, obviously this take a bit longer.

But really no matter. You will now enter a room with the usual arousels. All baggage comes off the plane. You want till your baggage appears on the carousel and head towards the exit. There will be a friendly inspector waiting there who will check your customs declaration and most likely waive you through (or send you for a secondary inspection)....when you emerge there will be an airline desk where you re-hand over your luggage with the tags on it and they will have it sent over to the connecting flight if your baggage was checked through. Note, you will have to go through security again so if you hae say bottles of booze with you from duty free shoping on the other side, you must put it here in your luggage or it will be confiscated when you go through security for your next flight. You will go through security screening again, even if you already have a boarding pass and were checked in for the connecting flight.

That's the way it works.

In the US - unless you are coming on those Canadian or Irish flights where you clear US custome in that country (by US personnel) you must go through immigration, pick up you luggage and go through customs, then recheck your bags and go through security again.

This is not how it is done in Schengen - but it IS how it is done in the US.

Having your luggage checked through means that you can then just hand it to the airline desk again after you clear customs. If it hand't been checked through you wold have to go through the whole checking in process again - with luggage being weighed and ticketed etc - before going through security.

OK thanks for the clarification- so in the US, we MUST collect our checked luggage (unless coming from Canada or Ireland) before continuing onto our final destination.

That must have been an aberration the time in JFK when it never appeared at the carousel but still made it onto our connecting flight.