USA has the only airports in the world with no international transit lounges
Published on HivePostify by @trip-hop · Mon Aug 24 2026
I don't know exactly when it happened, but I became aware of this only after trying to fly from Central America to Asia in the past few years. Perhaps this rule has existed for a very long time but the way it works in most other countries is that if you have a layover at that airport that is in a certain country, but you are not actually visiting that country, you do not need to bother with immigration and customs, you just stay in the international portion of the airport and everything is fine.
This is something that many airports, particularly in large Asian cities, that the airports do exceedingly well - some of the best areas I have seen are in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. But in USA, I guess we have a "screw you" sort of attitude because whether or not you have any intention of spending even a single minute on USA soil, you have to go through immigration and customs.
[src](https://www.insidehook.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GettyImages-1177050436.jpg?fit=1200%2C800)
This wouldn't be so annoying if it wasn't for the fact that security, immigration, and customs weren't the least efficient aspect of any airport in the world. I joke about how this portion of the process sucks because it is the only part of any airport that is staffed by government workers. The rest of all the parts of the puzzle, even the Burger Kings, are run by private entities that need to be focused on efficiency and cost-effectiveness in order to survive. Governments need not concern themselves with such things nor do they have half a crap if you are going to be made late for a flight because of their slow-moving actions.
[src](https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2012020220120205E15TR05OLSTORYp1.jpg?w=640)
While this hasn't happened to me personally and perhaps because I am American, there are loads of folks that get items taken from them due to USA import rules even though the country that they started in as well as the country they are traveling to, do not have such rules. It seems rather heartless to me to take things away from people because of a technicality. These customers do not have a ticket to a USA destination, have no intention of so much as leaving the airport, but they are being treated as if they are going to do exactly that.
The official word form the government is that airports in the USA are not designed to handle high levels of 'throughput" or international customers that are just passing through on a layover and while I can definitely see that this is true in certain shitshow airports like JFK and LAX it does seem a bit odd to me that while the rest of the world feels compelled to make something like that exist, the USA is just like "nah, everyone just has to go stand in a bunch of lines for hours."
Some Americans, and most of the US politicians like to harp on about how USA is the most successful and wealthy country in the world, and that very may well be true by a lot of metric, but it certainly isn't in regard to their airports.
Of the top-5 "most stressful" airports in the world 3 of them are in the United States, Newark, JFK (NYC), and LAX (Los Angeles) are airports that once you have gone to them once, you are going to remember them, and probably do everything in your power to never have to go to them again.
Other countries feel the pressure to build new airports or at least improve the ones that they currently have in order to change with the times but that doesn't seem to be the case in USA. I loathe when I have to change flights in USA because not only do you have to go through customs and immigration just to go through it again and leave right away, but you have to collect all your bags and re-check them with the airline. There is no such thing as just passing your bags through to the next plane. Why?
I tend to look at this as USA pretending that they have in infrastructure problem when what they are really doing is data collection. They already have my biometrics, I went on a school field trip as a child where the had a "Fun" get fingerprinted section of our tour of the police station. But for anyone who isn't American, now if you so much as travel through the USA they are going to get your fingerprints and also your facial recognition on file. I'm surprised they don't ask for blood samples yet. There's time!
So if you are booking an international flight that has a hub in the USA, and a great many flights going to central and south America will, and you see that there is a 4 hour layover, rest easy and pre-annoy yourself. You are going to need those 4 hours and they are likely going to be the worst 4 hours of your entire trip. Well done USA!
Tags: #travel#usa#airports#annoyances#customs#immigration#lax#jfk