Where can a private jet clear customs in New York, and until when?

A private jet coming home to New York from abroad can clear customs at all three business airports. That much most people know. What they are rarely told is that none of the three does it around the clock, and that the airport being open does not mean customs is.

CBP publishes a fact sheet for each airport. Read side by side, they show two airports with the same hours and one that works quite differently. This page compares them and shows how the hours shape a return trip.

The short version

• Teterboro and Westchester: 7:30 a.m. to 11:15 p.m. CBP inspects arriving aircraft seven days a week inside those hours.
• Republic: 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Its fact sheet asks for 24 hours’ notice by email and limits general aviation arrivals to 20 passengers without prior approval.
• A charter books landing rights days ahead. Federal rules ask a charter operator to apply at least 48 hours before the arrival; the fact sheets add the port’s day-of procedure on top.
• Permission is for a time, not a day. It is granted for an arrival time plus or minus 30 minutes at Teterboro and Westchester, and 60 minutes at Republic.
• The airport is open longer than customs. All three are attended continuously; the inspection hours are what limit an international arrival.
• Where you clear differs. Westchester processes arrivals at three FBOs, Republic at its main terminal, and Teterboro at two facilities with different exits.

What are the customs hours at each New York airport?

CBP’s current fact sheets give these figures. Each is the airport’s own sheet, identified by its publication number.

	Teterboro (TEB)	Westchester (HPN)	Republic (FRG)
CBP fact sheet	KTEB-1225, December 1, 2025	KHPN-0326, March 16, 2026	KFRG-1125, November 18, 2025
Arrival inspection	7:30 a.m. to 11:15 p.m., 7 days	7:30 a.m. to 11:15 p.m., 7 days	9 a.m. to 11 p.m., 7 days
Port procedure for permission to land	Contact CBP at least 2 hours before departing the foreign airport	Contact CBP at least 2 hours before departing the foreign airport	By email, before departing and at least 24 hours before arrival
Arrival-time tolerance	Plus or minus 30 minutes	Plus or minus 30 minutes	Plus or minus 60 minutes
Where you clear	Hangar 1 (north side) or Jet Aviation (south side)	Signature-West, Million Air or Atlantic-East	The main terminal, with an FBO representative present
Limits	Passenger flights only	Passenger flights only	Up to 20 passengers without prior approval

The hours are those of the inspection service. CBP’s office hours at Teterboro and Westchester run longer, from 7 a.m. to midnight, but an arriving aircraft is inspected only inside the narrower window.

Why can’t a private jet land at any time?

Because these are landing rights airports: airports where flights from abroad land only with CBP’s permission (19 CFR 122.1(f)). For a charter, 19 CFR 122.14(a)(1)(ii) says the operator’s application for landing rights “must be made not less than 48 hours before the intended time of arrival, except in emergencies.” Each port then sets its own procedure for confirming the arrival, which is what the fact sheets describe, and grants permission for a specific time. At Teterboro and Westchester, if the arrival time moves outside plus or minus 30 minutes, “you must contact CBP to resecure permission to land.”

In practice the operator handles this. It files the manifest in eAPIS, requests permission to land and updates CBP if the time changes. Your part is to supply passport details early and to understand that a late departure from abroad can change where you land, not just when.

How do the hours shape a return from Europe or the Caribbean?

They set the latest departure time. The arithmetic is simple: the latest landing, minus the flight time, minus a margin for weather, winds and a slow departure abroad.

• From Europe. Westbound flights into the wind take hours, and the clocks run backwards. The Paris and Nice route guides give the block times by aircraft; the Nice guide works out that the aircraft needs to leave Nice by about 8 p.m. local time to land at Teterboro by 11:15 p.m.
• From the Caribbean. Shorter flights leave more room, but late-afternoon departures from the islands land close to the edge. The Turks and Caicos guide shows the times.
• From Canada. Toronto to Teterboro is about an hour by jet, so the hours rarely bind; the border rules article covers what does.

If the planned landing is too close to closing, the answer is an earlier departure or a different airport of entry for the night, decided before the aircraft leaves.

How is clearing customs different at each airport?

Teterboro gives the operator a choice of two CBP facilities, made when it requests landing rights. At Hangar 1, on the north side, passengers are inspected, then reboard and taxi to their FBO. At Jet Aviation, on the south side, they leave straight from the inspection. Teterboro FBOs explains which to ask for.

Westchester processes arrivals at three FBOs: Signature-West, Million Air and Atlantic-East. The FBO is chosen when permission to land is requested, and passengers leave from that FBO once inspection is over. This is recent. Until June 19, 2023, every international arrival at Westchester had to stop at a single CBP office first, as AIN reported when the change took effect.

Republic directs every foreign arrival to its main terminal. An FBO representative must be present when the aircraft arrives, and the FAA’s airport remarks note that terminal use fees apply. Its 24-hour notice makes it the least flexible of the three for a return whose time might change.

What to ask the operator about an international return

1. Which airport and which customs facility is the return planned into? At Teterboro and Westchester, it decides where your car meets you.
2. What is the planned landing time, and how close is it to closing? Ask what happens if the departure abroad slips by an hour.
3. Has permission to land been requested, and when will it be confirmed? At Republic, that has to happen a day ahead.
4. Is anything on board that CBP needs to know about? The fact sheets ask for notice of live animals, weapons, hunting trophies and commercial imports.

What Jake does

Lombardi Jet Services is a broker, so the operator requests permission to land and files the manifests. Jake plans international returns backwards from the airport’s customs hours, asks the operator which airport and facility the flight will clear at, and arranges the car to that building.

Since November 3, 2026, everyone aboard a flight into the US from abroad also signs the CDC’s Ebola attestation before boarding; who signs it, and how. The full process, from the passport details to the eAPIS manifest, is in flying private internationally. How the three airports compare on everything else, from runways to parking, is in choosing a private jet airport.