"LAX Snafu"

I am in the US now, but LAX didn’t say “welcome back home” nicely to me. Even I had close to two hours transfer time between flights but I still missed my flight back to Austin.  I have to wait here for another 8 hours for the next one.  I want share my bad experience with you and hope to help some of you who travel international to prepare better in the future: If you transfer from an international flight to domestic at LAX, you must give at least two and half or three hours in between. I arrived at LAX via Air China, went through border checking, got my bags, and went through the customs. All of those activities took me about a hour. That was quite normal. Then I walked out of the International terminal. I couldn’t find any sign of guidance or TV monitors showing how to connect to my domestic flight. I needed to go to United Airline, but I even don’t know which terminal I should go to. There are 8 terminals at LAX. I spent quick an effort and found an information counter but nobody was there. I feel a little rushed and grabbed anybody I could asking information: workers move baggages, security guys, .. you name it. I got all kinds of answers. I went upstairs and came down. finally I found an information has a person working. I was told to go to Terminal 7 and I needed to take a shuttle bus outside. The location of bus stop was not marked obvious. It took forever for one bus to come, super crowded.  Every stops took a long time for people going up and down with bags. Finally I arrived at the Terminal 7 I only had 20 minutes before my flight taking off. There was a long line for security checking. I talked to the guy who was assisting and got the permission to cut the line, but it still took me about 10 min. I ran with all my might and ...... still one minute too late for my flight. I complained to the person at the podium. With no emotion showing on her face, she told me: “Go to the customer service”. I guess she sees someone like me everyday. I booked my next flight but need to wait for 8 hours. So I got time to write you.... Now my jet-lag starts to attack me. I crawled to a corner seat like a homeless guy, while the background music were singing: “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle all the way .....”