Why do U.S. international airports lack ‘sterile’ international connections areas that don’t require you to clear U.S. customs in order to connect on an international flight, like airports in many other countries have?
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The US explicitly prohibits sterile transits: from a legal perspective, anyone setting foot on US soil must clear immigration even if they are about to immediately depart.
Since that regulation is in place, airports can not create a sterile international concourse separate from domestic departures. This also has the advantage of simplifying airport design, as gates on international arrival capable concourses can be swapped between domestic and international use as needed.
As for rationale, 9/11 happened, and we’ve been pretty paranoid about security ever since. It also helps that the US isn’t a overly huge international-to-international gateway, so the ability to simplify terminal design does have some merit.
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Simply put, the US explicitly disallows them because of national security concerns. It’s also not a thing that the airports will really lobby against. The US is kind of a big country. If your flight would be something like Santiago Chile-> LAX -> Tokyo, you don’t have a lot of other options that aren’t going to be massively out of your way. Comparatively, if someone was flying Australia -> UK via Dubai, well they could instead connect in any dozen of countries along the way if Dubai suddenly made the process harder, and Emirates might have a problem with this because some of their popular routes depend on relaying people from A to B via Dubai. It’s also not a very uncommon thing. Canada, the Schengen Zone, the UK, ~~and Aus~~ all have similar policies.
One of many post 9/11 regulations, that’s not allowed. Idea being that someone might board in a place with less strict security then board an international flight with a fresh tank of gas over US soil armed with whatever they managed to sneak through to take said flight over.
We also just don’t have nearly as many international layovers heading to another country as “many other countries”, so theres no big push to change that policy.
Consequence of our size, relative geographic isolation and that most people who would be negatively impacted by it can’t exactly vote or write their congressman on the issue. Not having one and all.
Practically, it’s to avoid having to station USCBP and perform the required renovations at airports like Bumfuck Nowhere International, MT, with one weekly service to Rat’s Ass International, SK.
The US can also throw around a disproportionate amount of weight in international aviation regulations, despite being a fairly small transit hub, simply by being able to pull the ‘we invented the first practical aerodyne’ card as well as the ‘we made your planes, shush’ card.
In most countries the process for international works like this:
Go to airport -> go through security -> go through exit control -> go to your gate.
Once you’ve gone through exit control you can’t leave the aiport without going through customs and immigration again. You are not free to leave the airport.
In the US the process for international departures is like this:
Go to airport -> go through security -> go to your gate.
There are no exit controls. The US doesn’t track who leaves like many other countries. Largely this is because most international travel to/from the US is by US citizens so tracking when they leave is mostly unnecessary.
As a result anyone can leave the airport, even from the international departures section.
In order to accommodate a “sterile” transit system the US would have to require that all US international airports implement exit controls. So instead of requiring the very small percentage of passengers who are transiting to go through customs (an inconvenience for them) it would require EVERYONE traveling internationally to go through exit screening instead.
Its far easier, efficient, and more economical for the US to inconvenience a small minority of transiting passengers, rather than the vast majority of departing international passengers.
Other countries which operate differently do so because their transit profile is significantly different. European airports for example handle far more international transits than the US due to their proximity to each other.
Most other countries have a really small domestic air travel market. In the US it’s the primary long distance travel, so our airports are built for it.
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