How a recent high school grad is helping travelers find Global Entry appointments
When Eli McDuffie learned that his mom was having trouble finding an in-person interview appointment to complete her Global Entry application, he did more than commiserate with her about the impossible-to-find appointments. He created a solution.
Even more impressive is that McDuffie, a San Fransico-area teen, did all of this before graduating high school.
Earlier this year, McDuffie created TTP Appointments, a program designed to find open Global Entry appointments for you. It all started because his mom, like many of us, was searching for a way to bypass the long lines at customs by registering for Global Entry.
"It's very hard to get an appointment here because there are so many people searching for the same thing," McDuffie told TPG. "In order to help my mom, I created a program that would search for open appointments. I originally intended to only use it that one time to help her out, but once I was able to get an appointment for her, I realized I could work on it a little more and make it available to the public for everyone to use."
Related: 13 things you need to know about Global Entry
What McDuffie's mom experienced is not uncommon. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it was expecting to receive 3.5 million applications for Trusted Traveler programs (TSA PreCheck, Nexus, SENTRI, Fast and Global Entry) during the fiscal year; it was also still addressing the backlog of applications it received during a pandemic-related, five-month closure in March 2020. Even today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website lists a four-to-six-month processing time for Global Entry applications.
That's where McDuffie's TTP Appointments program – and his expert coding skills – come into play. McDuffie has been coding since he was in middle school. With his background in creating apps and websites, it took him only about five months to take what he had created and make it robust and secure enough for public use.
"Basically, TTP Appointments scans for open Global Entry appointments every day for every time at each Global Entry interview location in the U.S.," McDuffie explained. "If you wanted an appointment in San Francisco, for example, the program would scan for open appointments at that airport and send you alerts for any available appointments it finds," he added.
Rather than crossing your fingers and checking for Global Entry appointments day after day, TTP Appointments does it for you — and it doesn't need coffee breaks.
TTP Appointments has been available to the public for about four months now. McDuffie has already helped approximately 300 travelers find Global Entry appointments, some of them completely for free.
TTP Appointments offers two services: a free plan and a paid plan. With the free version, you can sign up to receive email alerts from one Global Entry enrollment center. With the paid version ($24.99 per month), you can receive text and email alerts from up to five Global Entry enrollment centers and set custom date-range parameters if you are looking for an appointment within a certain time period.
It should come as no surprise that McDuffie plans to pursue a computer science degree. However, he's not waiting until after college graduation to continue finding solutions for frustrated travelers.
The program he's currently working on has nothing to do with finding Global Entry appointments, but it will help you find something equally coveted and just as difficult to secure: Disneyland and Walt Disney World dining reservations.
Now that McDuffie has tackled one major pain point for travelers and is in the process of resolving another, we can only say we hope he keeps at it for the long run. Maybe one day, he can help us figure out how to reach airline customer service agents more quickly or skip the increasingly long waits at airport lounges.
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