Dallas Fort-Worth Airport

Arrived from Australia 20 February 2015 - worst part was waiting 20 minutes for our luggage to arrive. Overall entering the US took about 30 minutes from leaving the plane to completing Customs - not bad I suppose. Connecting flight to Atlanta was uneventful. Overall - DFW is a clean modern and very large airport.

Arrived DFW Sat 17th January 2015 to find now you have choices. Being from the UK you can now go through ESTA channel. It takes about 2-3 mins to process your passport and answer some questions you get a slip of paper with your photo on it present that to a immigration officer then through to baggage. My bags were already waiting for me. Now there are three areas for customs. I entered the ESTA gate and through you go. For me no more than 10-15 mins from Immigration bags and Customs. Something that should have been done years ago has finally arrived. I have been coming to the US through DFW since 2000.

I have now changed flights here on several occasions. It is best avoided - immigration is very slow security is dreadfully crowded/inefficient and the inter terminal transit is slow. Allow at least 3 hours for this. On the plus side BA/AA help with transfers when they can and there are lots of bars and restaurants if you miss your connecting flight (very likely).

Five gate changes in two hours is unacceptable. Even with skylink I was exhausted. Had to catch skylink three times to keep up with the gate changes. It seems to me that it is just short of a controlled chaos. Someone there doesn't know what they are doing or is unable to control what is going on. Could not find anyone that could explain why there are so many gate changes. The flight assistants I talked with even thought it a joke. I will no time in the future go to DFW. Hard to accept this concept without even a simple explanation other than the gate changes DFW is pretty nice to go through.

I have arrived at DFW twice this year on flights coming back from Mexico City (once in January and once in December). I will only recount my second experience as the two were very similar. As opposed to other reviewers it appears that my flight was the only one arriving at that time. At least I didn't have a mob of angry fellow passengers to contend with. So when you get to passport control you will likely find a lady that smiles at you but doesn't do much of anything else. Once you figure out on your own how to use the machines for automated processing you'll get a piece of paper back from the machine. If your has an X on it that's bad. After finding the path out of the area where these machines are you will run into another lady whose native language is not English who if you ask for information will not be very helpful but if you try to go to the next step without getting her approval will tell you that you need to stop and wait for her (so damned if you do and damned if you don't). Since my little piece of paper had an X on it she pointed me towards the CBP counters (you have to wind your way in the opposite direction of how you came in). There was no one manning the counter she sent me to. Two more people arrived behind me. This lady and I could still see each other. I wanted to yell that there was no agent but was afraid of incurring the wrath of the best and brightest at Customs and Border Protection. Finally she came over to take a look. Just when I though she was about to take some kind of action all she did was yell at another woman working on the side for non-US citizens to take us "somewhere else." At this point finally an agent comes to man the counter. This gentleman was visibly fed up and not happy to be there. Maybe that was not such a bad thing because he clearly wanted to be done with me as soon as possible so he asked me a couple of questions didn't really wait for me to answer and waved me away. When I got to customs one agent only was working. There was another agent but he was just sitting there drinking water and watching the world go by. What bothers me is that almost a year later the experience was almost exactly the same. I'm not a fan of self- service passport control. Since humans will still need to be involved. What's the point? It probably only makes the CBP agents feel like they will be replaced by machines soon which will have a detrimental effect on their already less-than-stellar attitude. I forgot to mention both times there was a group of CBP agents talking and laughing in the back while travelers were trying to figure out what to do. So other than portraying Texas (and the US) in a terrible light I don't know what else the international arrivals process at DFW accomplishes. Again I'm only glad there weren't multiple flights arriving at the same time. However since I was sent to a queue no one was manning I still have to say the queuing was unacceptable. I will say the terminal was clean and looks modern but faced with everything else I will avoid DFW in the future (and consequently American Airlines as well).

Have arrived at many US airports from international flights and this will be the first and last at Dallas. As the previous poster stated you will need at least 3 hours if you have a connection to make. Arrived after 10 hr flight from LHR and queued for the automated immigration terminal which is completely useless and irrelevant as you will then need to queue to see an immigration officer (circa 1 hour) collect bags and then on this occasion there was 1 officer for customs serving at least 3 international flights. Absolute chaos people panicking to make connections pushing in staff completely unhelpful with the standard "you will be rebooked if you miss your connection" took me 3 hours to get through. Why they don't have an express lane for people with connections is beyond me this is a hub isnt it?? I'd say 90% of people arriving Dallas is not their final destination. Never again I do wonder if the airlines have any say at this airport as there is an impact on their business as well. Love the states but never Dallas regards immigration for me.

This would have had to have been my worst airport experience in 40yrs of International Travel. The staff co-ordinating the customs/border control area were hapless to say the least. There were only 3 desks out of 20-30 open. The airport would have been fully aware many hours in advance that 6 international flights were arriving in a similar time frame yet did nothing to alleviate the congestion. Many people missed their connections. DFW was recently lauded in local/national and international news for having the newest technology to process travellers faster. Well I can tell you that there a few airports (incl LAX) that are slower than DFW.

After a long flight from LHR we were met with queues queues queues and unhelpful staff. Not the best impression for an international entry point for the USA. Do not even attempt to make a connecting flight with under 3 hours to spare. We had to queue 25 mins for an automatic passport check queued 20 minutes to see an immigration official then picked up luggage then queued again to someone to check our reason for visiting rechecked bags then had to clear security again (more queuing). On top of that the boarding cards from LHR didn't work so we were sent back to the American Airlines desk to be reissued new ones. Until we got to a gate staff were almost universally unhelpful (we were told by all that we had time to make our flight easily). American airlines blame the airport and take no responsibility for the systematic chaos and the airport staff apparently don't get any feedback that people are missing their flights because of the queuing. We missed our flight to SLC were put on standby for the next one late at night were booked onto one the following day in the end which was cancelled when we arrived at the airport the next morning. Not to mention last minute gate changes causing havoc and confusion for passengers. We did get to SLC in the end having been issued 5 separate lots of boarding cards. The journey back through DFW was much easier but from other reviews it sounds like our experience of entering at this airport is not unusual. Next time we will clear immigration stay overnight than tackle the internal flights the next day. Seems like the only sensible way with kids in tow.

We recently went from Lubbock to Miami via Dallas/Ft. Worth on American Airlines. Dallas is one of the best airports I've been to. The American Airlines Terminal A is very new very modern has lots of food and retail options and is very uncrowded. The half-circle layout of the terminal was excellent because it doesn't take forever to get from one gate to another. The Skylink stops are very convenient and there are 2-3 in each terminal it's a good way to get from one terminal to the other without taking a bus. Our flight to Miami was out of Terminal C another very modern very clean terminal. Overall a nice airport serving the Dallas area.

Excellent Airport though terrible for connecting flight or even entering Dallas for that matter. The facilities are great excellent choice of shopping and restaurants sky train is great and gives a good view of the airport. Customs is a nightmare if there are so many international flights arriving why isn't there staff at customs had to connect to a flight to Mexico and had 4 hours though it took close to 3 hours to get through customs so that I could pick up my luggage and then re-check in the luggage and go once more through security Why they don't have a section for people connecting to other flights is beyond me I was not interested in going out of the terminal then re-entering it. It is a disgrace and Authorities must make sure all customs booths have staff when international aircraft's arrive.