Right now immigration in the Cancun airport is very severely understaffed. Management is not addressing the issue fast enough. Lines to get through immigration here can be 2 or 3 hours long right now!! The lines should be less than 30 minutes. If you are traveling to Cancun soon try to prepare for a long wait. There have been a lot of people, especially those coming off long flights from Europe, who have been fainting in the immigration line because they are standing too long after a long flight. And PLEASE if you experience a long immigration line complain to everyone you can think of. Complain to your travel agent, to the airline and especially to Immigration itself. Public complaints (especially if they are written, even in English) get addressed while immigration employees who complain about under-staffing get ignored. So please BITCH and MOAN all you want!!! You can find contact info for Immigration here: http://www.inami.gob.mx/
I came back to Cancun a few days ago, and I estimated the line at about 3 to 4 hours, considering that a few days earlier I waited 2 1/2 hours to clear the customs in Fort Lauderdale and the line was much shorter. "Only" 2 flights there instead of 5 here. And maybe -just maybe- the Americans work faster than the Mexicans. Coming from Europe would be a nightmare. When I come back from France, I have a ~20 hours flight with 7 hours jet lag. And it is supposed to be "low season". How happy I was to be a Mexican . I would have loved to be an American that day! But I am not sure anyone cares. I talked to the guy who led me to the inexistant Mexicans line, he told me there was no money to hire more people. Of course you know that better than I, RG... Tourists will still come here, complains or not, lines or not. What about money in the US customs???
I don't think many of the agents at the airport have any knowledge of or control over budgeting. There was a rumor that INM was hiring 70 new agents in Cancun. But so far those new agents have not materialized. Given how many agents have quit in recent weeks there must be money to at least replace the missing ones. As far as I know INM has a mandate to keep lines to less than half an hour per flight and also to keep individual examination to about 30 seconds per passenger. I don't see how the US agents could work faster than that, because it's not possible. In my experience US immigration is usually slower than Mexican immigration. But then I often get to skip the immigration line in Mexico so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about...
Two weeks ago I came back and there was a 3-4 hour wait according to the agent I spoke with. It is indeed good to be a Mexican! I went right to the quite visible "Mexicanos" line and right through after weaving my way through lots of hot grumbling tourists. Last week I came back and there ws no one in Immigration--foreigners or Mexicans--same day of the week about the same time. On a tourist outgoing note: Seems the Dominican Republic beat out Mexico/Cancun as the country having U.S. Immigration and Customs in its airport. Cancun has had the plan in place for about 5 years and just can't get past the "threat to sovereignty" mentality long enough to implement it. Same procedure as in some Canadian airports where on your way out of the country, you get your ticket and boarding pass and then immediately go through U.S. Immigration and Customs in the Canadian airport so when you get home, it's out the door! Separate posting on the new U.S. Global Entry program.
Weekends are always busier than weekdays. Saturdays are usually busier than Sundays, but both are bad. Afternoons are worse than mornings, usually by 2 pm immigration is busy. If flights are late then evenings can be bad. Tuesday nights are often bad because there are lots of flights from Europe that day and many are often delayed. Basically if you can arrive in the morning you'll be in good shape.
we arrived on a tuesday evening from ireland and had to queue 2 hours 10 minutes to get through then when we got our luggage we had to queue for another 1 hour 5 minutes to get through security as there were only 2 metal detectors working...very frustrating.... on our way home we only had to wait 10 minutes to get through security.... :ireland:
We just returned from our first (of many) trips to cancun. We arrived on a wed. at 10:30 am and were the only flight in the terminal. Our flight out was delayed because of tropical storm dolly until tues. at 2:00 am and again we were the only flight in the terminal. So it seems, as others have advised, mid-weekday mornings might be best.
