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Excited passengers deplane in Las Vegas from Canada, Mexico or Great Britain, ready to hit the Strip, catch a show or place a bet.
Instead, they stand in lines at the airport for up to two hours.
That’s not good for tourism or the economy, local officials say. And it happens frequently at McCarran International Airport.
So airport officials want to enlist the help of the state’s congressional delegation to solve the growing problem of delays for international passengers trying to pass through Customs and Border Protection at the new Terminal 3.
Randall Walker, director of the Clark County Aviation Department, expects to talk with House and Senate members, beginning this week with Sen. Harry Reid, to address the bottleneck he believes may be a result of understaffing at McCarran’s CBP office.
Reid and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood are scheduled to tour T3 Friday, and Walker plans to take advantage of the visit to explain the staffing problem. Because the CBP is a federal office within the Department of Homeland Security, Clark County officials have no authority over its staffing levels.
But help may already be on the horizon. A spokeswoman for the CBP said the agency expects to transfer personnel to Las Vegas from airports across the country to address the problem.
Lee Harty of the CBP’s Los Angeles office said a 25 percent increase in staff is planned to address an anticipated 30 percent increase in international passengers at McCarran. Harty said new employees would be in place by mid-September. For security reasons, the CBP doesn’t disclose the number of employees at airports.
“It takes a little time to move people around,” Harty said. “We’ve already met with airlines and stakeholders and asked for schedule changes to help solve the problem, but we know passenger counts are expected to increase.”
Since the June opening of T3, which is the entrance to Las Vegas for 16 international airlines, airport officials have worried about delays in processing arriving passengers, especially during peak periods. The longest waits occur between 2 and 5 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays, when most overseas passengers arrive.
The average peak wait increased from 43 minutes a year ago to 85 minutes this year, Walker said, although he noted that average wait time can be misleading. Some passengers wait up to two hours to clear Customs, he said.
“I think a lot of people felt that once we had the new facility with new technology in place, things would be much better,” Walker said. “But the bottom line is, you still have to process all the people, and that takes people. You can provide all the facilities you want, but if you don’t have people processing them, you can’t take advantage of the facilities.”
Local officials have stepped up their efforts to attract foreign tourists to Las Vegas. Studies have shown international visitors spend more time and money when they travel than domestic tourists.
The campaigns have worked. Walker said international passenger arrivals are up 25 percent from a year ago and up 33 percent year over year for the first six months of 2012. And three new international air carriers debuted at McCarran earlier this year.
But as new airlines move in and expand, lines are expected to get longer. New flights from Manchester, England, already are planned by British Airways, and Walker hinted that other international arrivals are coming soon.
McCarran officials got an indication in January that there could be staffing problems when former CBP Port Director Kim Smith said prior to T3’s opening that the Customs office wouldn’t be staffed daily between midnight and 8 a.m. McCarran officials still haven’t received an answer about what to do if airlines want to bring flights in at that time. Walker said that hasn’t been an issue so far, but the airport doesn’t want to turn away airlines that could commit aircraft to only those hours.
New Port Director Warren Eales has made the best of flexible staffing so far, Walker said. CBP not only handles international arrivals at T3 but also procesess private jets arriving from foreign countries and international cargo on the west side of the airport.
Walker said Eales adopted an “all-hands-on-deck” policy to put as many staffers as he can to man Customs lines during peak periods.
“I don’t fault the local CBP guys,” Walker said. “They’re doing everything they can to make their operation as efficient as possible.”
The CBP passenger logjam has created another problem at T3.
The airport’s baggage delivery system works so efficiently that suitcases hit the five baggage carousels faster than CBP can process passengers. When a fully loaded jumbo jet with up to 650 suitcases is cleared by ramp workers, a single carousel can’t handle the volume because passengers aren’t immediately picking up their bags. The system shuts down if too many bags clog it.
T3 has six international gates with a seventh available at peak times. Confusion would reign if bags from one flight were distributed on two carousels.
If more CBP lanes were open, however, and passengers were processed faster, the problem would be solved, Walker said.
“Our international (traffic) is continuing to grow,” Walker said. “Without additional manpower, it’s only going to exacerbate the problem.”