Two weeks ago, I flew from Paris back to Seattle and was standing in what looked like an hour-long line at U.S. Customs. A Customs employee casually announced, "And if you have the Mobile Passport app, we have a separate line for you," and walked away. Nobody reacted.
Curious, I pulled out my iPhone, looked up “mobile passport” in the App Store and installed it, answered a few questions, and finished the process on a “receipt” screen displaying a barcode. I waved the Customs officer down again, showed him the screen, and asked, “Like this?” He said, “Yep,” and opened the barrier next to the line.
I felt almost embarrassed as if I were being allowed to “cheat” somehow, and I turned around to the people behind me in the line and pointed to my phone, saying, “This thing is in the app store – anyone can do this.” Then I hustled off to the front of the line, went to the separate counter for Mobile Passport users, and was done 30 seconds later.
There was another long Customs line in the airport after baggage claim, and I got to skip that line, too.
For the time being, this is a pure free lunch. If you’re going to be traveling internationally and returning to the U.S. anytime soon, look up the app and get it installed.
My guess is that eventually everybody else is going to figure this out too, and the Mobile Passport line is going to be just as long as the old line – but it will still be a huge net benefit to travelers because the Mobile Passport line will move much faster than the old line.
This is because the Customs officer only has to scan the barcode on each person’s “receipt” screen, rather than stopping each person to answer questions and collect a paper customs declaration.
Is it really free, with no catch? What does the app maker get in return? Well, the application has access to the user’s departure and arrival gate information, so my guess is that they will eventually start selling advertisements or coupons for restaurants close to the user.
It’s reassuring to know that the app maker has a way to make money; this means that they’ll probably stick around, and they probably don’t have some other nefarious purpose other than profit. When I posted about this on Reddit, one user objected that he didn’t want to provide his “personal information” like his passport number to the app, even though the app is endorsed by the U.S. government – which, by the way, already knows your passport number. Well, if these tinfoil-hat-types don’t want to use it, that just keeps the line shorter for the rest of us.
It does only work for U.S. and Canadian citizens entering the U.S., and it only works at the 24 airports (and one cruise port) listed on the app maker’s website at https://mobilepassport.us/.
The most interesting thing about the experience was that, even after watching me install the app and skip the hour-long line, nobody else in the line appeared to budge. The pressure to follow the crowd was apparently so strong that no one else wanted to be the odd duck stepping out of the line, even if it meant going to the front. Perhaps the lesson is that while most “free lunches” are too good to be true, it doesn’t hurt to be on the lookout for the few ones that are real.