Xmas software update knackered US Customs computer systems If you were trying to enter the US on Monday, queues were much longer than usual. That's because a Christmas software update borked the main computer systems used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). On Monday, the main passenger checking system used by CBP to check for undesirables trying to get into the Land of the …
Because the U.S. is so large, a lot of people get processed at major arrival airports then get domestic flights on to their final destination. Long delays getting through customs mean a lot of people missed their connections :(
Probably want to run updates like this through the test & dev environment a little longer before going live in production.
Agree with you on principle, but honestly I don't know if there is any down-time at major airports anywhere in the world, so one day is technically probably just as bad as any other.
For me, if I were one of those developers, I would have postponed the upgrade to after XMas on the basis that I would have wanted to avoid a chance of being called in during my own vacation.
All the companies I have been working for lately are familiar with the concept of the "change freeze". No big changes around the end of the year or other business critical time periods. No changes to live production environment unless there is a failure with business impact. All smaller failures remain frozen, and are to be fixed in January. The type of the business does not matter much - telco, banking, retail, government, utilities, etc. All services facing big portions of the populace.
</Captain Obvious>
To really foul up things, you need a computer!!
Old saying that applies here. Then there is "testing, yeah, we heard of that (somewhere)".
This reminds me of the hours long wait for passport control at the Moscow airport. They had one guy (that took his time) for a plane load of us nice tourists (who want to spend good money). As the line got pretty small, (a dozen or so out of a plane load or two), they added more passport inspectors. Real understanding of queueing theory folks!!
Just the courier has good chances of being an underpaid Afghan or Syrian... and delivering a bomb in a email is quite harder.
Anyway, once most will be forbidden to enter USA (and many will stay away as much as they can once "hate the foreigners" will reach its apex), custom queues won't be an issue even without computers.
Some commenters probably didn't get the courier reference you're talking about. ;)
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Maybe the customs systems are still on Win97 - in which case pardon my gaff.
Or perhaps Drump has already started building is wall - virtually for now. Keep them outsiders out ---- unless their (they're) cute little puddies.
So Trump's Mexican-detecting software got uploaded early? All the stories about a borked update are a smokescreen. This is the future reality in the United States of Trumpton. If you don't fit Dickhead Donalds vision of a New America then you're going to get barred/banned/sent to Guantanamo
The update was to the systems used by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff. This is one of the post 9/11 changes that actually makes sense: there is just one organization handling both the Border Protection (i.e. Immigration) stuff and the Customs (i.e. stuff) stuff.
20 years ago I came across one airport that actually made sense in the way they handled the border formalities: you got off the plane and went to baggage reclaim for your bags; once you have your bags, you went to immigration, and once they passed you, you went out via the customs inspection. If they decided to hold you back at immigration, you had your baggage with you, and the random pace of baggage claim metered the flow of people to immigration.
This was at SFO, incidentally (which has since reverted to the usual immigration/baggage claim/customs routine).
That's a great question, to which many US airport designers apparently do not have a coherent answer. My local airport is a good example, where the baggage claim belts are less than a hundred meters from the doors to the "arrivals road" sidewalk, with no apparent access controls and no one even occasionally spot-checking luggage to retrieving-person.
I can attest that most US airports have baggage claim in publicly accessible areas. It's weird for obvious reasons you've noticed, like any J Random dude being able to nick someone else's baggage with impunity.
The one place where this doesn't happen is when going through CBP. Thus your baggage is actually safer when you're arriving into the US than during domestic or connecting flights.
I thought (i.e. based on passenger numbers through airports) that travelling between Christmas Day and the New Year was a quiet period compared to a normal working week?
Heathrow stats show December as the second quietest month of the year and traditionally long haul flights in December/January are cheapest between Christmas and New Year.
My customers all have change freezes in place from the middle of December until at least the end of the first week in January. Similar, shorter change freezes cover the Easter break. No system or network changes, other than emergency fault remediation, are allowed during these freezes.
Who on earth does major change work on a mission-critical production system during a period when the availability of your own people may be restricted and it's likely that your vendor's A-team (or possibly anyone) won't be available in their support department to help you pick up the pieces if it all goes horribly wrong?
""Travelers at some ports of entry experienced longer than usual wait times, and CBP officers worked to process travelers as quickly as possible while maintaining the highest levels of security."
Was there a noticeable difference? Arriving at (major west coast airport) during high summer to find a sphincter consisting of exactly 4 officers handling entering international passengers leaves one to wonder how much more of an incompetent face we can present. Arriving in the US consisently conveys the impression we'd just opened borders yesterday, with visitors being an unfamiliar novelty. Visiting Russian in 1971 was less of a CF.
What's also puzzling is why the system includes so many steps -before- a dead-eyed officer glances at the passport. What is the point of the machine passport scanning and biometric antics before one is granted a sneer? Private-sector contractor parasite efficiencies dictate the theatrics in part, but are those scanning terminals actually connected to anything?
During the past 15 years, the general immigration queues at all major US international airports have gradually became such a nightmare that I won't even consider transiting through the US any more, and am extremely leery of visiting. You simply never know how long it will take you to get through the customs: it could be half an hour or it could be half a day, with absolutely no facilities (not even water or toilets in many places) available while waiting in the standing queue.
If you are eligible at all, I strongly advise joining Global Entry or, if you are a Canadian, NEXUS. Even if you cross that border just once a year, it is still worth the cost of the application fee: you get to bypass the general immigration queue completely; in many airports, you also get to bypass the general security queue (which is yet another nightmarish thing about flying in/to the US).
Unfortunately for myself, I am no longer able to maintain my NEXUS membership: even though as a Canadian expat I am technically eligible to join NEXUS, I would likely have to show up at a Canadian port of entry for an inteview/fingerprinting - and that would be a little too expensive to do from where I am based now. Perhaps if I manage to time it to coincide with my next visit back ... that's worth thinking about.
You *do* realise that Global Entry is only available to a *very* limited list of countries and none but five of the VWP countries, right?
And the kicker for UK citizens is that you must apply via GOV.UK (and pay £42 for the privilege *on top* of the $100 fee to the US)... No refunds for *any* failed applications either. Nice.
Yes, I do realize it is an option not open to many people - this is exactly why I did include the link to the eligibility criteria. And yes, it is relatively expensive for a casual traveler.
However, if you need to travel to the US while maintaining relative sanity, it is the only game in town. Unless, of course, you are a part of the 0.1% which goes through the general aviation terminal after arriving on their private charter jet.
Like if you were updating your company's SAP system - few users at the time, so there is more time to work on problems before they become critical (of course it sucks for the IT people working over the holidays, but that's another story)
But there is MORE travel over the holidays, so this is probably the worst time they could have chosen for this!
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