American Airlines if offering free enrolment in Global Entry to its crews according to a press release it issued last week.
“American is proud to be the first airline to offer Global Entry membership free of charge to all of our eligible pilots and flight attendants,” said Tim Campbell, American Airlines senior vice president of Air Operations. “Global Entry is another tool that will make travel easier for our crew members, who work and travel throughout American’s extensive international network. We applaud DHS Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and CBP Deputy Commissioner Kevin McAleenan for their partnership in this effort.”
I think this is a nice gesture from AA but have rarely seen crew queuing at airport immigration anyway, so this does seem a little over the top. However, it shouldn’t really add much waiting time for most (paid) GE members as queues are rare except on the busiest days at the smaller airports where small numbers of terminals cause a wait.
At least this way they’ll know about it. On my last AA trans-Atlantic, the flight attendant kept insisting that I needed the immigration card, despite my explaining GE to her. She kept saying that it didn’t matter and we needed them anyway.