Quito airport - long wait at passport check for return flight
 

I just wanted to say that on our return, we arrived at Quito airport 2 hours before our flight to Miami departed and we barely made the flight.

I don't know if this was just the time and day, but there were many many flights leaving on the saturday morning (8:10am), that there were huge bottleneck queues through the passport check. Many flights were delayed and I'm not 100% sure if our flight actually waited for all its passengers since its delay was only by 10mins. Certainly there were seats empty and I remember many random passengers were pulled aside at check-in to have their luggage checked (extra delay). Also keep this in mind if you have to catch connecting flights. We got through immigration at 8am, the same time as the person in front of us whose flight was at 7:20am.

So make sure you have PLENTY of time to get through the airport and just in case, be generous with time in between connecting flights.

Staff seemed quite flustered themselves and didn't quite know what to do so they kept telling everyone to just stay back in the queue. I know we spent over an hour in this immigration queue. It's just that they have to enter info from you passport in by hand.

:)

Maybe it is time of day. Internationally, I've never flown anything but that early-morning American Airlines flight out of Quito. It leaves at 7 or 8 a.m. depending on time of year. I was always told to check in three hours in advance of departure. I make a point to get there right away -- I'm one of those types :) -- check in and go to the gate. Maybe a bottleneck begins to develop as time progresses.

As for passport control, in October at least (last time I was there) they had these neat little machines that read the passport information, and then send the passports through, typing the entry and exit stamps onto the page kind of like a dot-matrix printer. I was fascinated to watch it. It went very fast.

They are building a new airport east of the city and it's scheduled to open in 2009. It promises to me much more spacious.

It was few years ago but we went through the same madness in Quito. I also remember uniformed personal (soldiers?)with dogs walking among already frustrated passangers. But we had such fantastic trip to Galapagos and Ecuador that we did not care too much.

Same thing happened to me last November. My flight was at 10:30 am, got to airport by 8 am and barely made it to flight.
I was one of those chosen to have suitcase opened and checked and that wasted alot of time.
I sure didn't have enough time to shop in the airport as I had planned.

Hi Jeff,

Yes, they're still using those machines. But they still seem to need to enter data manually so hopefully one picks a fast typer. :)