Yeah but a lot of this is because the US has a very self-centric world view, they think everyone is coming to visit them and have no concept at all of an international transfer. In particular they don't have real international departure lounges (that you can't just walk out of without going back thru immigration) like the rest of the world.

Anywhere else on the planet you would pass through a metal detector to get upstairs to the departure lounge and get on your plane.

This is why if you are travelling to Europe from NZ (as I will be on Monday) Singapore/Hong Kong/Shanghai/Tokyo are better candidates for transfers than LAX/SFO

This is true, a lot of other countries do it better. I found Iceland customs to be particularity efficient. Iceland air uses both the front and rear doors of the plane which also speeds things up.

In Fiji they have a band that plays songs for you as you stand in the customs line, can you imagine that in Seattle?

Sounds like Nirvana?

This happened on a recent trip for us. We connected in San Francisco (to Kona, HI). Met up with my girlfriend's sister just fine. Her other sister and brother-in-law, however...

We flew from Toronto to SF, had a 7 hour layover. It was grand. We even went downtown and back with plenty of time. Her one sister flew in from Vancouver—also no problems.

Her other relatives flew in from Victoria, and got stuck in customs at SFO for over 3 hours when their layover was scheduled to be just over an hour. They had to rely on the graciousness of the airline to get them on another flight. They had to take a 4 am flight to Honolulu which had a 4-5 hour layover then connect to Kona. The Iron Man race was the next day that we went to see. They didn't get to sleep for 30+ hours. I mean, there are worse cases where you'll have to endure that kind of stuff. Calfornia->Hawaii is a pretty good place for it to happen. But still.

We were through US customs at YYZ in about 20 minutes.

On another hand we took the Victoria -> Seattle Clipper ferry and US Customs in the Seattle port just sort of hand-waved us through.

> got stuck in customs at SFO for over 3 hours when their layover was scheduled to be just over an hour.

Less than two hours for an international-domestic transfer is crazy at ANY airport, USian or otherwise.

I've made a 45 min transfer at Beijing, they did miss one of my bag though.

Customs in the US is a two-tier experience: with Global Entry (which isn't that expensive or hard to get) you just glide through, even at SFO.

Yes. It's insanely inefficient, but some spots are better than others. Seattle has some very real, physical bottlenecks that cause very long delays. We thought we were safe with a 6 hour layover, but we very nearly missed our connection.