Chicago Terminal Five Aer Lingus

They won't make you go through customs and passport control twice. I regularly fly into the international terminals of Newark and Philly from Ireland and we always bypass customs and passport checks. Sometimes they will even gate off a passage so that we are passing within inches of the Germans, Italians and Spaniards standing in line with their passports.

Been years since I was in O'Hare so I can't remember how far T5 is from T2.

Yep, once you arrive in the Immigration Hall, there will be a nice lady from the TSA with a loud booming voice directing passengers from Ireland to proceed straight on thru, bypassing the check points completely. You can't miss her. She won't let you miss her. The last thing the folks in Chicago want is want is stray lambs from Ireland clogging up the immigration queues unnecessarily. As Buffybot says, it is fun to look at the puzzled and envious looks at the masses of people waiting to clear Immigration as you just zip on thru !

As you exit, you just hand your customs declaration form to a dude at a desk and you are in the International Arrivals Hall. Take the escalator upstairs and follow the signs to the monorail train that will take you to T2. They come every 2 mins. The journey is not long. Total trip time from when you hit the Immigration Area to T2 is 10 mins, maybe 20 if there is a long line of people waiting to hand over their form to the customs dude.

Once you are in T2, you are in the main check in area, not the actual departure gates themselves. (Chicago does not have an international transit area that the likes of Heathrow or Paris have.) You'll still have to go thru the same airport security procedures as if your journey was starting in Chicago...queue up, take belts, shoes off, put your hand luggage thru scanners etc etc. The lines can be quite long, so don't dilly dally when you first arrive in T2, unless you have several hours to kill.

lynchie wrote: »

That will be impossible as you will have had your customs declaration form taken off you when you pre-cleared immigration and customs in Dublin.

They used to do it the way ProudDUB describes. Immigration was done in Dublin but Customs was done in Chicago. When I went this year, both were done in Dublin.

My bad. I haven't flown into O'Hare since last Spring. Didn't know that they had changed the procedure. Howev, unless they have totally redesigned the Customs and Immigration area, you still have to by pass the Customs official collecting forms as you exit. Passengers arriving from Ireland may not have to hand in the form, but the folks in front of you (that are arriving from other countries) still do. So the long lines may still be there if you are worried about transfer times.