Questions and Answers

I am an Australian citizen and will be transiting through SFO on my way to Mexico. I have a 6+ hours stopover time in SFO. Am I allowed to go out and meet my friend who is staying in SFO? If yes, what are the conditions attached to it?

No reason why not. You’re going to have to clear immigration anyway. If SFO is anything like LAX when the Aussie flights arrive in the AM prepared for a long queue. Then you can exit and return going back through security.

Just check on travel time unless your friend is coming to the airport. Immigration and customs, travel to the city and then getting back a couple of hours before your departure may not leave a lot of time.

[QUOTE=”Gaurav, post: 25070, member: 79″]Just check on travel time unless your friend is coming to the airport. Immigration and customs, travel to the city and then getting back a couple of hours before your departure may not leave a lot of time.[/QUOTE]
In the morning…forget about it.

All international flights arriving in the US require that you enter the US and re-clear security. The US does not have an international to international zone in any airport. So as long as customs and immigration arriving does not take much time, you should have some time to visit your friend in the city. The BART train takes about 45 minutes from the airport to downtown SF (and back). There is no difference between clearing security for a domestic flight or an international flight in the US, so as long as you are back at the airport within an hour of your flight (assuming you are already checked in) you should be fine.

I calculate if you land at 6am, assuming an hour at customs, puts you into SF by 8am, you’d have 2 hrs to have breakie with a friend heading back to the airport for a noon flight.