This year has been a big one for me when it comes to international travel, and so last December I decided to bite the bullet on getting a Global Entry account to use throughout the year. When I got approved for the service; however, I ran into one big snafu: the soonest appointment I could get for my in-person interview was eight months away, long after a few international trips I had planned.
If you’re somehow not familiar with Global Entry, it’s a program where you submit to a background check and in-person interview with U.S. Customs and Border Protection once at your home airport, and then for $100 you’re able to go through expedited lines at customs when you get back into the country (and you get TSA Pre when you’re flying domestically).
It’s a service I recommend everyone who travels, even a little bit, to get. Earlier this year when I got back from Italy, for instance, I was through customs in San Francisco a full hour and half before my boyfriend was thanks to Global Entry. I walked through the same lines as flight crew at SFO, waited in zero lines, and was sipping on coffee at Starbucks outside of security roughly 20 minutes after we landed. If you can save yourself that customs headache a few times over the five year span, and use TSA Pre a few times, that $100 is well spent.
The first step in applying for Global Entry is filling out an online form for your background check, which is pretty easy and you can really do anytime. That in-person interview, which you…
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