Flight home question

Yes, you will go through immigration/customs at your first point of entry. Usually, you collect bag for customs and then most airports have a belt where you drop it off so that you do not need to leave the secure area.

You would clear customs at your first point of entry. Based on your post, this would be Detroit.

Actually it is immigration -- passport control. Then customs and it is pretty routine and quick.

Are you flying Delta? or another airline, makes a difference I think.

I believe you will always have to leave the secured area when entering the US and then have to go back through security to make a connecting flight. The key to your situation is that dropping off the bags only takes a minute or two. However, it can sometimes take quite a while for your bags to arrive on the carousel before you can proceed through Customs.

Do, you feel that the 1 1/2 hour layover will give us enough time to do the customs ‘stuff’? I’m just wondering if we should be looking at different flights home w a longer layover at our point of return city.

Are there any other flights to Buffalo that day?

“Then customs and it is pretty routine and quick”

…unless you are coming in through Seattle and get the customs (not immigration) guy who’s a total jerk and who even questioned the Delta pilot ahead of me as to how much money he had.

If the flights are booked as a single itinerary, then the airline deems it a legal (makeable) connection.

Of course there are many factors that can affect that, but you won't know until the day of your flight.

As long as it's a single itinerary, the airline will assist you if you miss the connection to Buffalo.

Can't hurt to bone up on the connection path in Detroit, though.

To elaborate regarding Delta, DTW is a Delta hub, and McNamara terminal is basically all Delta. My experiences through there is that international flights arriving are pretty well spaced out, they use kiosks for all passengers, so things move quick. Baggage, like anywhere can be a wildcard, but has always been quick, and once in the terminal, your connecting gate is not too far, in A concourse there is also a skytrain. I would not be concerned about 1 1/2 hours, especially if they endorsed the connection.

If you are not flying Delta, then you likely will arrive at Evans terminal, never been through there, but the terminal only has 30 gates or so, so should not be too bad.

We start on Virgin Atlantic Air which is a partner to Delta. We have flown through Detroit many times. We have always like Delta, one of the reasons we picked this flight(s). We normally have TSA Pre, which will hopefully help….
There are later flights that go to Buffalo after our scheduled flight.

FYI, I have re-posted this on the General Europe forum. Looking to see if anyone has had an actual experience going through Detroit for their feedback.

Thanks all for your input!!!! Much appreciated.

TSA Pre-check will only help if you have to exit the secure area and re-enter through security at DTW ...

It is standard security procedure to got through security again once you have had access to your checked luggage. So when you pick up your checked bags to go through customs, your checked bags will be rechecked right after customs, and you will through standard screening for your connecting flight.

"There are later flights that go to Buffalo after our scheduled flight."

This is excellent. I would not worry then. I really only worry if I'm trying to connect to the last flight out of the day.

Hopefully most forum members will view the forum in the All Topics view and everyone will have seen this post on the England forum.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/all-topics