On April 5, 2023, passengers on Norse Atlantic Airways between Paris Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG) and New York JFK airport managed to skip one of the most dreaded stages of the US arrival experience: immigration clearance.
The passengers had not been pre-cleared at origin and customs procedures had not been suspended or abolished.
Apparently there was a serious mishap in the handling of the arriving aircraft, resulting in the Norse Atlantic Airways flight in question being treated as a domestic arrival as it offloaded passengers at JFK’s Terminal 7. Reportedly passengers were able to walk through the terminal, to baggage collection and into the city without clearing customs and immigration.
Norse Atlantic launched the routed between Paris and New York-JFK barely a week earlier, on February 27.
One of those affected explained on a Reddit thread that, after walking out of the terminal with his fellow passengers, he received an email from the airline asking him to return to the airport by 9am the next morning and report to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to have his entry into the US registered properly.
The passenger has been providing updates of the evolving situation on a live Reddit thread, including the fact that Norse Atlantic had offered a free flight anywhere within their network to each affected traveller and would cover transportation costs involved in getting back to JFK.
At the time of writing, this incident was still being investigated.
Norse Atlantic Airways issued the following statement in connection to this incident:
“We are investigating a disembarkation issue that took place on arrival at New York JFK on Tuesday evening concerning a Norse Atlantic Airways flight from Paris. A small number of customers who did not clear US immigration have been directly contacted regarding this matter.”