Ethiopian Airlines DUB-LAX Question

Redderneck

Have asked in Travel forum but this might be a better place:

There's no preclearance in Dublin for this flight, so am wondering if anyone has heard anything about how much hassle/time is involved clearing in LAX is from this flight?

Ethiopia would be regarded by the US as a fairly high-risk point of origin and I'm slightly concerned that clearance could be a hugely time-consuming effort which would negate the other benefits of the flight; great tiimings, only direct connection, good pricing.

Anyone know/heard anything?

Noxegon

Unless something has changed, all international flights heading into LAX end up in the same place. Your wait for clearance will depend on how long the queue is at that time -- and presumably how quickly you get off the plane!

Redderneck

The front of queue high hurdles is something I know well! My own travels have taught me - no matter how nice it would be in an ideal world for it to be otherwise - that certain nationalities; therefore certain airlines/flights coming from certain points of origin, tend to take longer than others to process. Language barriers, preconceived notions reinforcing behaviours, etc. I'll not say anymore than that on the issue.

I was just wondering if anyone had firsthand experience of the flight and how smoothly or not the process was at the other side.

I've slowed down as I got older and being a coach-riding cheap bastid to boot, my expectation would be that I would NOT be at the head of any queue...

trellheim

LAX depends on what flights you land with ... I had the misfortune once to be behind 3 flights from Mexico when coming in from LHR.

3 hours to get through.

BuffyBot

Noxegon wrote: »

Unless something has changed, all international flights heading into LAX end up in the same place. Your wait for clearance will depend on how long the queue is at that time -- and presumably how quickly you get off the plane!

Not all, but most of the long haul flights from most of the non-US carriers (who have their own terminals and facilities for the most part, and some of their alliance partners etc may also be using them).

OP: for the high risk aspect, folks with an EU passport on the flight wouldn't really raise too many eyebrows, especially as they know the flight has rights to pick up passengers in DUB.

As for the LAX factor: as described above, it really depends what else you come in behind/alongside. They do have self-service machines for ESTA approved travelers now, and have made improvements with the recent expansion of the terminal.

It used be the 9th circle of hell on occasions. Maybe about the 5th now

mojopin10

Sorry to revive this but flying Dub-LAX on Friday and wondering does the Ethooian Airlines flight have wifi on board? Can't find an answer online

As an aside there is talking of both Ethiopian and the USCBP wanting this and possibly their other flights pre-cleared in Dublin.

maximum12

Bit of a logistical nightmare to have some of the passengers pre-cleared for immigration and customs and others not.

maximum12

maximum12 wrote: »

Bit of a logistical nightmare to have some of the passengers pre-cleared for immigration and customs and others not.

Wouldn't happen. You'd clear the entire flight or you'd leave the entire flight. I'd see them deplaning at DUB, clearing all intending pax & flying on as a cleared flight. Similar happens with BA001 in SNN.

mojopin10

Wifi Lads? Yay or nay?

maximum12

Deleted User wrote: »

Wouldn't happen. You'd clear the entire flight or you'd leave the entire flight. I'd see them deplaning at DUB, clearing all intending pax & flying on as a cleared flight. Similar happens with BA001 in SNN.

So it's not going to happen at all.

the aircraft spends an hour on the ground.

if a passenger originating in ADD is refused entry by US immigration in DUB what happens next. They can't be immediately returned and are unlikely to have a valid entry visa for Ireland. I'm guessing US immigration don't have facilities to detain passengers in DUB.

maximum12

mojopin10 wrote: »

Wifi Lads? Yay or nay?

Check the airline website, they will lit what the inflight services are.

Most airlines still don't have international wifi

Noxegon

maximum12 wrote: »

I'm guessing US immigration don't have facilities to detain passengers in DUB.

They do, actually.

http://www.politics.ie/forum/justice/134364-us-prison-cell-dublin-airport-t2.html

Pat Dunne

Noxegon wrote: »

They do, actually.

http://www.politics.ie/forum/justice/134364-us-prison-cell-dublin-airport-t2.html

Here is a more direct link http://www.irishtimes.com/business/t2-arrives-with-a-lot-of-baggage-1.625817

Irish Steve

Deleted User wrote: »

Wouldn't happen. You'd clear the entire flight or you'd leave the entire flight. I'd see them deplaning at DUB, clearing all intending pax & flying on as a cleared flight. Similar happens with BA001 in SNN.

The much bigger problem would be that as well as immigration, the outbound flights from Dublin also clear Customs at Dublin. Whatever about clearing the passengers in an hour, it's a different ball game if you have to take all the bags off, get the passengers to claim them, and go through customs and immigration, and then load everything back in again.

That's going to be a massive exercise to arrange and manage, as that would also mean having to clear the incoming passengers through Irish Immigration in order to get them to the baggage belts for the reclaim, or there would have to be a new belt put in that would enable them to remain airside before going to border control.

Noxegon

Irish Steve wrote: »

The much bigger problem would be that as well as immigration, the outbound flights from Dublin also clear Customs at Dublin. Whatever about clearing the passengers in an hour, it's a different ball game if you have to take all the bags off, get the passengers to claim them, and go through customs and immigration, and then load everything back in again.

That's going to be a massive exercise to arrange and manage, as that would also mean having to clear the incoming passengers through Irish Immigration in order to get them to the baggage belts for the reclaim, or there would have to be a new belt put in that would enable them to remain airside before going to border control.

Hmm, is there a belt like that in Shannon for the BA LCY-JFK flight?

(And yes, I know it's a much smaller flight...)

Irish Steve

Noxegon wrote: »

Hmm, is there a belt like that in Shannon for the BA LCY-JFK flight?

(And yes, I know it's a much smaller flight...)

Not only is it a much smaller flight, but the origin is within the common travel area, so there's no immigration formalities to worry about, so a very different processing requirement.

JCX BXC

Irish Steve wrote: »

Not only is it a much smaller flight, but the origin is within the common travel area, so there's no immigration formalities to worry about, so a very different processing requirement.

Could you elaborate a little if possible? How does the flight being in the CTA affect anything?

Irish Steve

Carnacalla wrote: »

Could you elaborate a little if possible? How does the flight being in the CTA affect anything?

The formalities for a transit passenger will be less onerous, if they boarded from the UK, which is the only option in this case, while it is technically possible for a passenger to require a visa to enter Ireland, it is unlikely, as there are very few countries that do not have an automatic right of entry to Ireland having gained access to the UK.

That is very much not the case for the flights from Addis Ababa, where there is a good chance that most, or even all of the inbound passengers will require a visa to enter Ireland, even as a transit passenger, so processing them through the T2 system will be a much bigger deal than processing UK originating passengers. As far as I know (I've not been through T2 yet), there is no facility to segregate transit passengers from inbound passengers in the baggage hall, and to get access to the baggage hall requires incoming passengers to have passed through immigration if their flight originated outside of the UK CTA. Processing 35 (approx) passengers at Shannon from the UK, or (possibly) 200+ at Dublin from Addis Ababa are 2 very different scenarios.

The Veteran

Irish Steve - no foreign national (or to be precise non-national) has an automatic right of entry to the State. A passenger who seeks an airside transfer does not seek entry to the State and thus their transit to transfer flights might be facilitated but their entry to the state would be a different matter.

For information, the Visa Order was amended in 2015 to facilitate the Ethiopian transit and tech stop flights so that Ethiopian Nationals do not require transit visas provided they are transiting en route to the US and have US visas (same applies if they are en route to Canada). The ET504 flight is considered a tech stop as the pax do not get off the flight and arrive\depart on the same aircraft.

The CTA arrangement only applies to eligible nationalities travelling directly between the two States. The BA flight that stops in SNN would not qualify as the passengers are not travelling between CTA ports.

Pre-clearance is a big overhead and also must be paid for and would require ET operating from T2 which is virtually impossible given the hours of opening of Pre-Clearance and the clout of the carriers already in place.

Irish Steve

Thanks for the update. The point I was trying to make, and not doing very well, is that the design of T2 is such that a transit passenger that is then proceeding to US border processing has to effectively "enter" Ireland, in that the immigration checks occur before the baggage belts, and to the best of my knowledge, even if there is a route to get to US border processing while remaining airside, which is where the difficulty arises, there are no controls or segregation systems in place to ensure that transit passengers collecting bags from the belts then proceed to the US border checks, once in the baggage hall, it is possible to exit to "landside" without further checks other than customs, as the immigration checks occur before the baggage hall. Processing up to 200 passengers through "the system" in significantly less than an hour is going to be problematic, especially at the time of day that the flight passes through. At present, the only passengers that come into the system are those that are landing in Ireland, which is probably a relatively small number. If the whole flight has to be processed, that's a very different ball game.

The Raptor

mojopin10 wrote: »

Sorry to revive this but flying Dub-LAX on Friday and wondering does the Ethooian Airlines flight have wifi on board? Can't find an answer online

Flew this flight a couple of weeks ago. No WiFi on board.

The Veteran

If Ethiopian were using Pre-Clearance; there is no reason why their passengers (originating in Addis) could not be routed directly from the aircraft into Pre-Clearance or via the Transfer Corridor. The luggage identification can happen without the passenger collecting their luggage. It would be logistically challenging but not much more so than normal US bound transfers

goingnowhere

As Ethiopian use T1, no pre clearance possible

cowboyBuilder

Deleted User wrote: »

Wouldn't happen. You'd clear the entire flight or you'd leave the entire flight. I'd see them deplaning at DUB, clearing all intending pax & flying on as a cleared flight. Similar happens with BA001 in SNN.

Is that the A318 that replaced the Concorde ?

JCX BXC

cowboyBuilder wrote: »

Is that the A318 that replaced the Concorde ?

Yeah.

JCX BXC

goingnowhere wrote: »

As Ethiopian use T1, no pre clearance possible

We've established that, but that's probably the least of the barriers, a move to T2 is easy, there's several other barriers too.

Marcusm

cowboyBuilder wrote: »

Is that the A318 that replaced the Concorde ?

It's probably easier to consider it as the A318 which, for marketing reasons, carries a flight code historically used by Concorde.

cowboyBuilder

Sure, but it's kitted out all 1st class yeah ?

orionm_73

cowboyBuilder wrote: »

Sure, but it's kitted out all 1st class yeah ?

No it has 32 Club World seats. They aren't identical to the rest of the fleet Club World, but it's isn't First.

Pat Dunne

Carnacalla wrote: »

We've established that, but that's probably the least of the barriers, a move to T2 is easy, there's several other barriers too.

What other barriers might be involved in such a proposed move?