There’s nothing like coming to the USA, and being a victim of poor planning and having inadequate staff.

Good evening from what is turning into a class one ominishambles of a trip from Philadelphia Airport. But I’m not going to focus on American Airlines performance today… (that’s later).

Rather, it’s the turn of the US Customs and Border Patrol and my old friends – the Transportation Security Administration.

Lets start at the beginning – and we’ll dismiss the fact I was 2 hours down by the time I got to Philly (throwing my connection in chaos).

Let’s start with US Customs and Border Patrol. In Chicago, there is row upon row of Automated Passport Clearance machines. These are great, as they do the dirty data collection – and then you’re validated or not.

It does speed up the process.

Sadly, the US CBP at Philadelphia has deemed the APC kiosks are for US Citizens only, and as such, forigen visitors are reduced to filling in the Blue Customs form and queuing in a badly organised snake.

Sigh.

Although I will say this – they do provide the form in multi-lingual options.

You could cope with that normally – however there were a grand total of four agents on duty, with three international flights clearing at the same time, the queues get massive extremely quickly.

And I mean quickly. If I didn’t run, the wait I was in could had been a lot longer.

I’ll give the US CBP a plus mark – because after 40 minutes of waiting, they finally found more agents to process passengers.

I dread to think of the people at the back of the queue and how long they waited in the end.

Next came to baggage re-check… and it seems the TSA seems to ignore those wonderful tamper-proof bags that duty-free shops give out.

So – what was the point of that then?

Thanks for obeying the international conventions TSA.

Thankfully, I didn’t check my rollaboard case – so that’s in the hold. If they steal Jeanne’s bubbles – I’ll be annoyed.

Lets move onto the omnishambles that is the TSA in Philadelphia.

What you thought that it was just immigration? I’m just getting started people.

It’s an accepted fact that the TSA is pretty useless when communicating, identifying or… doing anything apart from screaming and running away.

And I had the full dose of that today with everyone shouting but not communicating, long queues, closed checkpoints, limited queues and quite frankly rude staff.

And I wanted a chat with the operations manager before I left the area to highlight the issues. He came, and as I approached, the gentleman scampered off into the sunset.

And that… made me angry… and frustrated. Summed up a rather crap travel day.

I talk about the passenger experience a lot more than I did in the past – one of the aim of the blog is to talk about passenger intelligence as well as passenger experience.

Today’s experience was nothing short of a total omnishambles. One could say clusterf**k, but I don’t swear much here. (See me in person to get the full sweary experience).

I’ve tried Philadelphia airport before in the past… and it was a shambles then. I see little improvement today… after 7 years of visiting. The only way to make the experience even remotely bearable is to pre-clear in Dublin.

As a passenger, writer and commenter – would I hand on heart recommend Philadelphia as an international entry point into the United States of America if you need to transfer?

HELL NO.

Simple as that.

A tweet was sent out to Philadelphia Airport for comment. At the time of publication – the airport has failed to respond.

As I passed by I saw a selfie sign. And I took a picture.

Sorry @PHLAirport. I’d rather connect anywhere else in the USA than here. #phlairport pic.twitter.com/lXl5Xm3uYK

— Kevin-Economy&Beyond (@EconomyBeyond) November 3, 2016

Welcome to Economy Class and Beyond – Your no-nonsense guide to network news, honest reviews, with in-depth coverage, unique research as well as the humour and madness as I only know how to deliver.

Follow me on Twitter at @EconomyBeyond for the latest updates! You can also follow me on Instagram too!

Also remember that as well as being part of BoardingArea, we’re also part of BoardingArea.eu, delivering frequent flyer news, miles and points to European readers.