Immigration @Mactan airport

Friday, Nov. 8, arrived @Mactan airport by 11:30pm. Start to line up for Immigration @11:55pm. It took me exactly 2 hours and 50 min. to pass through. Welcome in the Phils. The bureau of Tourism is promoting this country by advertising, video clips and more. Well a good idea might be to talk with Immigration to reduce waiting times. People waiting @that time were 99,9% from Asian countries. Only a handful of foreigners outside Asia, among me. There are 14 counters available of which only 6 were occupied. The detection gate by scanning passports of PH citizens not included. Is this a lack of enough officers or another reason. All regular flights arriving are most of the time full so depending on the plane it carries 200 to 300 passengers. When 4 flights arrive within a time span of let's say 30 min. about more than one thousand have to pass Immigration and that can be time consuming as I found out.
For sure Immigration knows exactly the arrival of all those regular flights and the average number of passengers, so why it seems to be impossible to have enough officers available to handle that the waiting time can be reduced up till 30 min., which I feel is acceptable but almost 3 hours..................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hey Biker, Welcome to the Philippines (although I think you've been here longer than me).. You did arrive just before midnight... I would guess by now you figured out that the national motto is "Wait awhile.." Filipinos' culture includes WAITING in line, whether midnight or noon. You just deal. Medical, gummint office, bank, traffic, you just stand in line, like Building Department or Dept of Motor Vehicles in the states. .. At least in the states, airport immigration (JFK-nyc) has 5 officers (2 min each) and 25 AI robot kiosks for returning US citizens..

I've heard horror stories from people who tried to save money by flying thru Shanghai, even transit passengers spent SIX hours in lines, many missing connecting flights (never transit through mainland china)... BPI branch yesterday had over 50 waiting with TWO tellers at 3 in the afternoon... Getting windows staffed is like trying in Dumaguete to get two main courses out of a restaurant kitchen at the same time (other than Salaya or Adamo)...

Welcome to the world...Maybe living in a cabin in northern Montana, you don't wait in lines.

 

The first time I came to to the Phils was in 2007. Once in a while i did experience a more than accepted waiting time, but that was in Manilla never in Cebu.
Your final hint..maybe a good idea, will give it a thought.

 

This year on vacation in the Visayas. Arrived at Sunday at 11 am and 8 immigration booths were occupied. Less than 15 min waiting time.
At departure one months later less than 10 min to pass thru the immigration.
Just with one luggage we had a mess for second checking. They told me the system gave an alarm for acid inside. The "acid" they found was in reality a bottle of Gatorade! But all personell was nice and polite to me.

 

Get an SRRV visa. Pass through the diplomatic line. Problem solved.


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Agree, but that only works when no other flights have just arrived before your own flight has arrived.

 

It may make a difference where the flights ahead of you originated from. I suspect flights from 1st world countries get processed more quickly than flights from, say, Bogota Colombia. Just a hunch. I once was returning on Air Jamaica flight at Miami; they did not profile, they just treated everyone as if they had 2 kilos of ganja and they took their time.


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