Global Entry inconsistent instruction

She has to receive conditional approval before the interview.

Did she sign up for interview alerts?

I agree with Frank - she must have the conditional approval. It can take a while - I think it took 7-8 months for me to become conditionally approved although it can be much less.

As Frank mentioned, she probably signed up for alerts and because these are automatic, they don't know whether she has gotten the approval yet.

We live 290 miles from where we would have to go for a Golbal Entry interview. Sorry, it is not worth spend several hundred dollars to fly there. Even a drive would mean an overnight with hotel and lots of wasted gas.

We have TSA Recheck and it takes care of our flight in the USA. The Global Entry addition would be nice for when coming back into the USA, but not for us.

We live 290 miles from where we would have to go for a Global Entry interview. Sorry, it is not worth spend several hundred dollars to fly there. Even a drive would mean an overnight with hotel and lots of wasted gas.

You can always schedule your interview at an international airport, if you are flying into or out of one. Many travelers have done that.

I'm traveling 6-ish hours to get to my interview. I live within an hour or two of several major airports, but none of them were even scheduling interviews and I don't get back until nearly midnight the next time I'm out of the country, so it will be too late to do an onsite interview. I decided to make a vacation out of it. I'll drive up the day before and spend several days wandering back home.

It seems rather random how long it takes to get approval. Mine was just a day and a half. I wonder if it's because I'd just had a back ground check and finger printing a month or so earlier for work, so I am fresh in the system. Anyway, it does seem worth the effort since I hope to do a lot more traveling in the next few years.

Now you can get a "global entry upon arrival" interview without an appointment. You have to have the conditional approval. Then when returning from international travel, you will have the interview in the secure customs/immigration area. No appointment needed. I don't have any personal experience with this, I just noticed the option when I was renewing my Global Entry.

Thank you all VERY much for your helpful replies!

I have had Global Entry, but my husband did not. He applied online and there were no appointments available in our area for months. He received his conditional approval and then went to the interview when we arrived from Italy to SFO. He did not have an appointment, there was only one person in front of him and he was finished prior to the arrival of our luggage. This was at the end of May this year.

I wonder if they will ever decide to use a system like Zoom or Webex to conduct these interviews online. Or, at the very least, have "outposts" more widely available so that one only needs to drive a short distant to an outpost where an online interview can then be conducted. I imagine with this way, at least there can be someone there to check your identity or whatnot if they need to do that kind of stuff physically, but otherwise the rest of the interview seems like one should be able to do online.

You can always schedule your interview at an international airport, if you are flying into or out of one.

I don't think you can pre-schedule these.

This is how I did mine, and it was walk up and wait in the line at Atlanta. In all my reading, I never saw anything about scheduling a post-arrival interview at the airport.

Also to the previous poster's idea of doing Zoom or other remote connection interviews - when you do your interview, they fingerprint you electronically on the spot, so until they have a way to work that out, I am not sure they will do any remote interviews.