If someone is flying from Toronto Pearson, to Baltimore-Washington Airport, can we take it as guaranteed that they’ll go through Customs preclearance at the Toronto end of things? or might that vary from one flight to another?
I’m about 95% sure you’ll clear customs in Toronto.
I flew from Ottawa to Washington Dulles and I did preclearance in Canada. I was flying Air Canada Jazz.
Thanks. Hopefully this will be the case. I’m actually not the traveller - but I will be meeting her there, and we’ve never met before, and we just need to figure out a meeting point (sounds like the baggage carousel might be the easiest).
I don’t think you can avoid U.S. customs in Toronto.
I can speak from experience - yes, all flights to the US from Pearson require pre-clearance with US Homeland Security.
Not so much that, as - IIRC any major Canadian airports that fly direct to the USA, there is a contingent of US Border Security (and INS?), actual US government employees, that process all passengers before they board. That way, there is no customs clearance required, for example, from Toronto on arrival at Newark or LaGuardia. (Does LaGuardia even have customs?) This simplifies things, because a lot of internal US airports then do not need customs. (Does Baltimore even have inbound overseas international flights?)
Once you clear customs and immigration in these locations, you sit in an separate area of the airport. It would be foolish to have this set-up but then not use it for every applicable flight.
Airports that have this are, I think: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary(?) and Vancouver.
TSA are the ones checking you at the airport security gates. Canada has its own security processes that meet USA standards, but they are not TSA (US government) employees.
In my experience, baggage claim is always the safest bet and easiest meeting point with little opportunity for missing each other.
It is absolutely guaranteed you will do so. I’ve made that flight and flown to 30 locations or more tin the USA from Pearson. All US-bound flights are precleared without exception.
In some airports (Toronto) the baggage claim area is secured from the public; the limo guys with signs and oher public are behind a fence behind a frosted glass doorway and cannot come in.
Other locations (i.e. La Guardia, Calgary and IIRC Vancouver) there’s at most a waist-high crowd barrier fence, and the public comes and goes. The La Guardia security checked our luggage tags before we left (one of the few places that did) ncessary I presume because it was so simple for people to wander in and help themselves.
So if you know what Baltimore looks like, I assume you know if you can get into the carousel area.
It does indeed (“Baltimore-Washington International”). Years ago, I met a friend who flew in there from Jamaica, and she went through customs.
I did some googling and the reasons for doing this seem to be a number of things: allows plans to fly into more US destinations (e.g. LaGuardia, which does NOT have a Customs facility), and also help travellers who are changing planes and going elsewhere in the US - saves them the hassle of having to get their luggage, go through customs, then recheck their luggage to get their connecting flight.
Yeah, it’s easier to put the customs in a half-dozen places in Canada than a few dozen places in the USA. Sorry, I forgot about Baltimore’s sharing an airport.
and Edmonton.
And Halifax.
There are a few Canadian airports with direct flights to the US that still don’t have preclearance, usually with very few such flights. Quebec City, for example. If you fly from there to New York, you have to go through customs when you arrive, just like if you came from Europe.
Yes, but they don’t handle airline flights. IIRC (looking for a cite), an airport has to be a port-of-entry in order to receive pre-cleared flights, because they want the option of reinspecting the passengers. That’s mainly theoretical, especially at LaGuardia, but AFAIK an airline wouldn’t be allowed to fly from a preclearance airport to an airport that had no customs/immigration facilities.
The best I could find was this news article from 2002, when Alaska Airlines had to stop service between Vancouver and Orange County because they (wrongly) assumed that preclearance meant not needing any customs presence at the other end.
Yes, IIRC, wasn’t WestJet flying from Hamilton to Newark? Or were they flying out of Toronto by then?
I’m not sure this is true. In the Montreal US (transborder) terminal, I’m pretty sure the security (baggage checks and pat-downs) is still being handled by CATSA, same as in the outbound international terminal, but you then enter the US Customs zone and deal with US Border Protection agents who are, as you say, American employees. From there, you are in an isolated area of the airport with only US bound flights.
Note that Transportation Security (TSA or CATSA) and Customs clearance are handled by two completely different agencies - I see this mistake a lot, where people assume that they are the same agents doing the security check and handling customs issues. You can bring certain items through security that might still be prohibited by customs in the country you are going to. For example, (CA)TSA doesn’t care if you are carrying more than $10 000 in currency, but Customs does. Certain foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, but also meat, can pass through Security but are restricted from entering various countries in an effort to prevent the introduction of non-native species.
This was my experience in Ottawa. I have flown domestically in both countries and when I flew from Canada to the US, I was screened by Canadian airport security (who had uniforms stating “Canada”) and, once I passed that, was screened by the US border screeners at a second screening line beyond the security screeners.