Paperless I94W/ESTA on Air New Zealand

Flew into LAX yesterday on NZ1 from London Heathrow, and found that the Green I94W forms are a thing of the past - but only on Air New Zealand.

Turns out that ANZ and the NZ Customs/Immgration service are part of a pilot of switching to 100% paperless Visa Waiver.

The pilot on NZ6 into LAX ran for a month, and now applies to NZ1/2 as well, as of last week.

Still have to do the customs declaration of course, but it's one less bit of paperwork, I guess!

Mike

Great news - do tell, what happens when you reach immigration in the US? Do they just use your passport to match to ESTA?

quote:Originally posted by slinky09
Great news - do tell, what happens when you reach immigration in the US? Do they just use your passport to match to ESTA?


Yes. Whether the entrant has a valid ESTA and valid APIS is available to the Border Control officer once the passport is swiped.

The ESTA and APIS validity are first checked on check-in.

ANZ in London even deployed a fleet of laptops with 3G dongles at check-in, so ESTA-less travellers could rapidly apply online.

The funny bit of this for me was that the officer who processed my entry on arrival in LAX normally worked in the CBP facility in the TBIT, and this was his first shift in T2 since the paperless VWP trial came in.

He was like... 'Er, do I jusst do this as normal, but without the green form?' to one of his T2-regular colleagues on the neighbouring desk. LOL. Good job he got a frequent traveller, like me... [;)]

They should give you a little explanatory ticket to keep which replaces your departure record, in case you're not departing with ANZ, and your departing airline gets agitated that you don't have a departure record to surrender.

It's made sense for Air NZ to be one of the first, as it's only a small number of flights each day into LAX, and it will speed things up significantly for the through pax on NZ1/2 that are just making the transit stop.

Cheers,
Mike

This is a good program, matching the automated entry system for citizens and residents which now allows you to skip the border lines completely, and not fill the customs form either. You just walk up to a terminal, swipe your passport or green card, check the boxes for the customs form and it lets you in and prints out the customs form for you there and then. Who knows, slowly but surely entry in the US is becoming relatively painless... I'll be glad to not have to stand in line in TBI at LAX anymore, that is for sure.