Surprise and Delight - São Paulo

In business school, I had a professor of marketing whose favorite refrain was "surprise and delight" your customer.  Today, after a long US-based saga of travel, I was surprised and delighted here in Brazil. So much so, I have to sit down and write about it before I do anything else. But let me set the stage.

My last blog post was about the new Terminal 3 at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo. It is a lovely building. You can see it from the outside here--this is a photo taken from the ramp to the parking garage where I had left "the Beast" (BH's ginormous Volvo) on Saturday night. That post was the last happiness in air travel for this past five days...until this morning. 

We flew United to Newark (delayed half an hour out of GRU, for no apparent reason), got stuck in an hour-long immigration line (because BH is B and not US, I had to go through the non-resident line. Not good.) and missed our connection to Boston by 20 minutes. The United helpers told us the rest of the day's flights were full to Boston but that we could fly to Providence instead. So off we went to Providence. Well, all of us except for one of our bags. And paid $200 more for the rental car because we were picking up in one airport and dropping off in another. I must say the PVD airport is very nice, though. I'm thinking about using that one more often.

BH is staying in Boston until Saturday. So it was just me returning to the airport on Tuesday night. There were two brief downpours at 4 pm which meant that my flight was delayed and I would miss my connection in Washington DC. I decided to stay the night, leaving my bags to be sorted and sent to meet me in Newark the next day. All this is to say that I did not have nice flight experiences in the US. Though United personnel were surprisingly fun and happy.

So, I was now taking a flight back on the eve of the World Cup start. Yes, it kicks off at 5 pm today. I was worried about lines at the airport, protests, traffic, everything. The plane was absolutely chock-a-block--Mexican fans, Spain, Costa Rica, Ecuador, US, you name it. As we landed (on time!), the flight attendant gave her usual announcements and then said she was cheering for Portugal. Then the PA was quiet for 30 seconds then the first officer came on and said "Go USA!"and then from somewhere, who knows where, 2 minutes later came "Viva Mexico" from the PA. Fun and funny.

We came into Terminal 3 again. Delightful. Still has a number of workers around doing last minute stuff (no holiday for the weary airport workers). There was zero line for Brazilians and residents (me). I literally walked up to the police and handed my passport over. There was a perhaps 20-minute line for foreigners but tons of windows open. Maybe less. By the time I had walked from the plane, spent 1 minute at immigration and walked to the baggage carrousel, all the bags were out. Unbelievable. 

This guy is thinking "what? I can't believe our bags are already here! wow!"

They ran everyone's bags through the x-ray machines, but all three lanes were open and efficient. Then I walked out to the garage from the walkway on the second floor, and put my key in the ignition exactly 39 minutes after stepping off the plane. An all-time record for days that I have had luggage (always, really). I did look down on the walkway and there was no line for taxis (a friend spent 2 hours in the taxi line on Monday). Tons of taxis. No traffic. Home an hour and fifteen minutes after landing. Spectacular.

So let me sum things up this way:

1. If you can fly any of the airlines that are currently assigned to Terminal 3, do so. These are: Air Canada, United, Lufthansa, Eithiad, Emirates, Turkish, Swiss, TAP. Do not be loyal to airlines if you are all "I'm an AA super-platinum all-star"--it doesn't count for crap if you come into the Terminal 1 or 2 mess. Fly the friendly skies. Trust me.

2. If you are a resident of São Paulo and going for a short trip, do the math on leaving your car at the parking garage. It may be cheaper than taking the taxi back and forth. And no taxi line and you can use your sem-parar. It does not get easier than this. Yes, you have to hoof a 1/4 mile from the arrivals gate at Terminal 3 but it's pleasant and easy.  

3. If you do have to take a taxi and the line is ginormous at Terminals 1 or 2, you may want to ask the officials at Guarucoop if there are taxis at Terminal 3. Then walk there. It may be worth it.

4. Might want to consider coming in on Brazil game days after all. No traffic. None. 

Traffic on Marginal: Brazil flags and military police cars

5. Prepare for the worst, and celebrate the best. I was ready to spend hours in lines. I spent no times in any lines. Surprise and delight, professor Carpenter...I get it!

6. Vai Brasil!

Get me out of here!! - São Paulo

Seriously, I just want to LEAVE the country!

So there is something that really bugs me in the international airports here in Brazil. No, it's not the fact that my baggage clearly takes a scenic tour on the way to baggage claim (I will have to eat my words this time when it arrived in 10 minutes as opposed to the 45 minutes the time before). It is not the two hour line at immigration at arrivals (depending on the day, and now that I am a permanent resident, it's much better). No, it's the emigration line. 

When you are leaving Brazil on an international trip, you have to go through immigration after the security lines. Note: security here is a breeze next to the US. Not scary breezy but nice breezy. Keep your shoes on, keep your computer in and come on through. 

But immigration can often back up to the security lines. When I left last Sunday, they stopped security several times so that they could clear the immigration lines. Yes, you have to go through whether you are Brazilian or non-Brazilian. If you are traveling without your partner but with your kids, you are in big doo-doo. That takes forever. You must carry a notarized letter that says you are authorized to travel without your partner--all of this to prevent international kidnapping. So, I'm in favor of checking out the unaccompanied travel of minors. But I am completely opposed to sending everyone through immigration. 

So, inevitably, I have to compare with the USA. When you leave the country as a citizen, you go through security (stripping down to your grundies, getting blown by some puffer machine or arms in the air with some kind of ultrasound, or whatever) and then you go to your plane. Done. If you are a non-citizen, you used to have to carry around the little I-94 coupon and the airline would take it, but I didn't see that this time with the BH. BH is not a citizen or a permanent resident of the star-spangled country but went through at the same velocity as I did. 

Why is it like this in the US? Probably because the NSA is scrutinizing you from the second you book your ticket. There are no surprises about who is leaving the country and when because the NSA and TSA and possibly Obama knows which seat you're in and what you're having for dinner and which movies you watched on the plane (yikes, that last Nemo is not reflecting well on me). 

Why can't we do this here? Why do I have to wait in an hour-long line to get through immigration to LEAVE the country? You're getting rid of me so who cares about checking the passport? Or we can do the same as the UK which I loved last time in Heathrow. The immigration guys randomly pulled people out of line at the gate. They checked your passport and visa and asked a thousand questions, did a cavity search and you were on your way. 

Or flag the people who look sketchy. This happened many years ago when I first lived in Brazil--they caught a vice president from a major telecom company leaving Brazil with 100,000 US dollars in his suitcase and his mistress on his arm.  The vice president, who I knew personally and ummm disliked would be the nice word, made two bad mistakes at this point. First, he told the R$600 salary per month (about $280US) federal policeman that he didn't know he couldn't take that much money out of the country -- that the 100K was "only a part of" his salary. That must have been popular. And when he was arrested, he had to prove that he went to college so that he could be in the nice prison. He had to call his wife to get a copy of that degree--and oops, he was with his mistress. The degree took a long time coming through that fax...

Also, the really bad guys are not going to go through Guarulhos or immigration at all. Like Pizzolato, the guy condemned in the Mensalão trial, goes by putt-putt plane, raft, crocodile back, whatever to Argentina and Paraguay, uses his dead brother's passport and he's out of here. This immigration stuff is just not working. Also it's "emigration", no?

Now I admit to cheating on Sunday. Instead of waiting in the Brazil/permanent residents line which was 4000000000 people long, I went to the foreigners line which was 10 people long. I pretended not to speak Portuguese. I am bad. But I got out of that line in 20 minutes instead of an hour or more. You do what you have to do.

Let's get this together before the World Cup, okay Brazil? Gringos don't like missing flights because of immigration. It makes them cranky.  Ditto Brazilians by the way, but they don't have the luxury of jumping lines.

Here's the story on the weekend mess at Guarulhos International Airport. Bon Voyage!