TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Immigration in CLT

Does anyone have recent experience clearing immigration in CLT on a Wednesday evening? A friend's flight has been changed giving her only an hour to make her connection. She'll be first class and carryon only, but is not GE. Thinking on a Wednesday it might be doable.

Certainly possible, but definitely should have a plan B prepared. We last returned to US through CLT in June - as usual, CLT worked pretty well. But, other than arrival time (usually at least a little early), delays can happen at immigration, luggage collection/rechecking, and security check, and then the question of how far to go to departure gate. Your friend will not need to wait for luggage which helps a lot. Issue will be immigration (which probably will not be too bad on Wednesday evening) and clearing security (which is the wild card). When we came through in June, they were restricting use of security check point closest to where you come up from lower level where you clear immigration and customs. No idea what was going on with that - hopefully will not be case for your friend. Overall, assuming your friend is able to move quickly, I would say "go for it" but have a definite plan B.

Edited to add that our last through CLT was on June 22 - a Wednesday.

Hopefully she has Global Entry. That would help.

OP's post said no GE.

They can probably make the connection with an hour but Global Entry would definitely help the situation. If their flight is late arriving it could definitely be problematic so I would absolutely have a Plan B in mind.

Oh. Didn’t catch the no GE part.

I don't really think that is a legal international connection. Has she called the airline to see if they would change it to something more comfortable in time frame? (IF there is another option available..0

We did that exact connection on August 24. We have GE but the other line did not look bad and was only a 10 or 15 minute wait at most. We had TSA precheck but had to walk a pretty good distance to find the correct security line (probably would have been better just to go through regular security as I don't think it was terribly busy). The international terminal is not that big. Assuming their flight arrives on time, and knowing they have no checked bags, they should make it to their next flight without too much difficulty.

We connect thru Charlotte with less than an hour between AA flights all the time without issue. Although it is quite a distance between domestic terminals and international.

We went through immigration last Friday around 8:00 pm in Charlotte and it took us about 20 minutes.