NEW YORK: The long wait times to clear passport control that travelers endured at Logan Airport have been sharply reduced after the state’s congressional delegation and local business leaders pressured federal authorities to increase staffing at the international terminal.
Earlier this year, travelers frequently waited as long as three hours to get through the US Customs and Border Protection inspection area at Logan’s Terminal E. But in the past month, the average maximum time is down to around 50 minutes, according to data released by the agency, while the number of agents available to process travelers is up.
The additional staffing, among other measures, was in response to a testy letter US Senator Edward Markey and other congressional representatives fired off in June to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees US Customs. Local business groups sent similar complaints, saying the delays threatened to curb tourism and could hurt efforts to get airlines to add more international flights to and from Boston.
“Boston wants to put out the welcome mat to the world, and having a 90-minute to three-hour wait to come through customs sends just the opposite message,” said Markey, who met with Customs and Massachusetts Port Authority officials in Washington, D.C. Wednesday to discuss the problem. “It’s improved significantly in the last couple months, but there’s more progress we can make.”
Customs and Border Protection officials did not provide a comment in response to several requests.
The delays threatened to undermine the progress that the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan, has made in wooing additional international flights to the airport. The airport now offers nonstop flights to 46 foreign destinations, including recently-added service to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. Massport says Logan received 200,000 more international passengers over the first five months of 2015 compared to the same period a year ago.
