TRAVEL INSIDER : Changing the Customs Used for LAX Arrivals : Airport: New passenger service official could help U.S. agency’s image, but don’t expect shorter waits.

The Customs inspectors at Los Angeles International Airport may not be your favorite people. Certainly, they aren’t favorites of Anaheim reader Jane Austin, who wrote us recently to lament the “sadistic, almost gleeful” way in which her baggage was searched on four of her last six international arrivals.

But take notice, Ms. Austin and others: Since November, U.S. Customs Service officials at LAX have been working on a pilot project aimed at improving the agency’s strained relationship with travelers. Similar programs are in place in Detroit and Dallas.

Before expectations rise too high, however, travelers should note that the Customs people haven’t specifically designed this program to speed up the arrival process. Instead, they’re hoping that if travelers are given better understanding of the process, they will be less frustrated by the amount of time and trouble it takes. And that in turn could save time.

The idea, in short, is to put a friendly human face on the agency. And that face for now belongs to Anthony Owens, 33, an eight-year veteran of the agency. Owens, reassigned five months ago from a post supervising inspections, is the first “passenger service representative” Customs has had at LAX.

Owens fields letters of complaint, takes calls at a newly established phone number (310-215- 2416) and personally greets three or four of the 80 or so flights that arrive daily at the international terminal. (Other Customs officials may be present at other arrivals, but aren’t as likely to announce themselves.) Instead of a uniform, Owens wears a coat and tie, and is quick with a smile.

“Less intimidating,” he explained, walking the airport halls on a recent day.

Customs officials say other passenger-friendly innovations are in the works: a five-minute in-flight video that will explain what arriving passengers can expect, and a passenger satisfaction survey conducted by an outside consultant.

“We want to diffuse this fear of coming through Customs. We don’t want to be viewed as uniformed ogres,” said Richard Vigna, Los Angeles airport director for Customs.

Eighteen Customs supervisors and 172 full- and part-time inspectors monitor the international passenger areas of LAX, including a varying number of plainclothes officers who pose as passengers, listening and looking for tips that could disclose illegal imports. (In addition to its operation in the Bradley International Terminal, Customs processes passengers at LAX’s Delta and Northwest terminals.) All told, Owens said, he and his colleagues enforce some 600 laws on behalf of some 60 local, state and federal agencies, most notably collecting duty and searching for drugs.

The growth of global air travel has not made their lives easy. In 1986, LAX Customs processed 2.7 million passengers. In fiscal 1992, which ended Sept. 30, inspectors handled 5.5 million. In 1993, international arrivals are projected to reach 6 million, and among U.S. airports, LAX will be surpassed only by Kennedy Airport in New York and Miami International Airport. While their workload has doubled, the Customs officials’ budget has not.

Because of such burgeoning traffic, Customs officials in 1989 stopped conducting brief interviews with every incoming passenger. But Customs officials aren’t the only government representatives that an inbound international traveler faces at LAX. Four other government agencies have inspectors and other officials in the area that many passengers think of as Customs territory. The most prominent is the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture asks at least a question or two of every incoming passenger, and officials from the U.S. Public Health Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are on hand as well.

Last month, on an uncrowded weekday--better circumstances than most leisure travelers face, to be sure, and well ahead of the summer vacation rush--I traced the path of an international arrival with Owens and chief inspector Michael D. Orlito as my guides. The test travelers we shadowed, a few hundred of them, arrived at precisely noon on a China Airlines flight from Taipei.

Owens stepped aboard, negotiated with the purser to have his welcome translated into Chinese, and offered a few quick words. The passengers, already crowding each other in the aisles, mostly stared blankly. Filing past, however, several smiled and said hello.

First stop: The Immigration and Naturalization Service. Here passports are checked for the first time. This is almost always the longest wait for incoming international travelers, even with several gates processing people at once. After 30 minutes, most of the Taipei incomers have been processed. In theory, the wait should never exceed 45 minutes for returning U.S. citizens; under directives from high above, immigration officers swing into a hurry-up mode--letting U.S. passport-bearers through quickly--if the processing of a flight looks like it will take any longer than that.

Second stop: Baggage claim. While travelers grab their bags, a Customs officer leads a drug-sniffing dog past the luggage. The dog makes no finds, but roving Customs agents focus on a prosperous-looking young man in a beige jacket. They escort him directly from the baggage claim area to secondary Customs inspection. By 12:40, most Taipei passengers seem to have gathered their bags.

Third stop: The Department of Agriculture, on alert for Medfly-bearing fruits and various other foodstuffs and agricultural products. Thirty or more passengers are pulled aside for a detailed secondary inspection, and when their bags are opened, the view is startling. The plastic bags in the middle of the inspection area quickly fill with forbidden fruit, forbidden meat, forbidden fish. One man’s large suitcase has nothing in it but food, including a plastic cookie-jar-sized vessel that is closely scrutinized by a brusque inspector. Orlito whispers that not long ago, an inspector found $250,000 in $100 bills stuffed into just such a container. This one, however, holds wrapped fish.

Fourth stop: Customs. Here, inspectors collect declarations and appraise travelers, sending 2%-3% to a secondary inspection. One man declares $10,000 in traveler’s checks and $6,000 in cash, and is passed through after brief questioning.

Secondary inspection by Customs officials range from a few extra questions to a trip to the hospital for X-rays if authorities believe a traveler may be an “internal carrier” of drugs. Though the number of internal carriers is down in recent years, officials said they still detect them from time to time. One day last year, X-rays showed a traveler arriving from Nigeria had six baggies of heroin in his digestive system. One ruptured while still in his body, officials said, and the man nearly died.

The smugglers’ strategies are varied. Polaroid photos in one Customs office show several variations on the smuggling theme: a man accused of carrying in 12 kilograms (about 26 1/2 pounds) of marijuana from Jamaica in a suitcase; a women accused of bringing 900 grams of heroin from Thailand in a sort of diaper beneath her underwear. Then there was the man from Latin America in February whose checked baggage held 40 poisonous snakes. On the X-ray machine, inspector Orlito recalled, “it looked like a can of worms.”

Of 422,171 international arrivals at LAX in February, Customs records show, 16 had illegal drugs seized, six were discovered to be carrying undeclared merchandise, and 25--many of them tourists returning from Vietnam--had forbidden foreign merchandise seized.

Back to the mysterious man in the beige jacket--the one who was escorted directly from the baggage area to a secondary inspection. In a room beyond the press of people at the Customs desks, he has been searched and questioned. His name had apparently tripped a red-flag notice in government computers (for reasons Customs agents declined to disclose), but he has come through clean this time. Within an hour of landing, he is on his way out of the terminal.

And by 1:15 p.m., 75 minutes after landing on this slow Tuesday, all of the Taipei travelers seem to have run the gauntlet of government agencies.

On the subject of customs, a few reminders: Americans can usually bring back up to $400 in goods acquired abroad without paying duty. The figure rises to $600 for returnees from many Caribbean and Central American nations, and to $1,200 if the destination is an American “insular possession” such as American Samoa, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands. For the next $1,000 worth of goods acquired in other countries, returning travelers pay a duty rate of 10%. After that, figures vary. More details are offered in “Know Before You Go,” a free 30-page booklet available at most Customs offices, including the Customs information desk in LAX’s Bradley International Terminal.