There's an app for beating the long lines at customs

Have you heard of Mo­bile Pass­port? This free — yes, free — mo­bile app is quick­ly be­com­ing u­til­ized at most ma­jor air­ports and sav­ing travelers, and cus­toms agents, tons of time.

You've prob­a­bly seen the signs for Glo­bal En­try when ar­riv­ing back in the United States. I al­ways look over at these short lines en­vi­ous­ly as peo­ple are ex­pe­dit­ed through the cus­toms proc­ess. But I can nev­er justi­fy its $100 fee.

Plus you have to sched­ule an ap­point­ment, be pre-approved, go through a back­ground check and an in-per­son inter­view. And with the clos­est of­fice nor­mal­ly be­ing at your clos­est ma­jor air­port, this proc­ess just isn't feas­ible for many peo­ple. Have I men­tioned that Glo­bal En­try only lasts for five years, and then you may have to go through the whole proc­ess a­gain?

En­ter Mo­bile Pass­port (www.mobilepassport.us). This app, which can be down­load­ed to any smartphone or tab­let, is the quick so­lu­tion for those who just don't want to go through the proc­ess of ap­ply­ing for Glo­bal En­try. All U.S. travelers are wel­come to down­load the app, en­ter their pass­port in­for­ma­tion, an­swer the same ques­tions you would be an­swer­ing on the ki­osk ma­chines or the pa­per form, and get in a short­er line than the nor­mal cus­toms line. And yes — all fam­i­ly mem­bers can be in­clud­ed in one app pro­file, so you don't have to split up or down­load the app for each mem­ber of your fam­i­ly.

A code is sent to your phone to help clear you through cus­toms, but it must be used with­in four hours of first inputting your in­for­ma­tion. The app does have a ver­sion where you can pay a mere $14.99 a year to store your in­for­ma­tion, mak­ing it even easi­er for pas­sen­gers.

At Kennedy International Air­port in New York, pas­sen­gers some­times wait­ed over three hours in the stan­dard cus­toms line, while those ar­riv­ing at Los Angeles International could wait up to 3 hours and 41 min­utes in the stan­dard line. Af­ter fly­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the last thing I want to do is wait in an ab­surd cus­toms line — es­pe­cial­ly if I have a con­nect­ing flight to catch.

Mo­bile Pass­port is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty — with more than 7 mil­lion down­loads — but the auto­mat­ed sys­tem still al­lows travelers to wait in much short­er lines when re-entering the coun­try. On av­er­age, the sys­tem pro­cess­es over 30,000 travelers a day com­ing back into the U.S.