We just came back from Scotland via Shannon airport in Ireland. Bags were checked through to our final destination in the U.S.
In order to get to our connecting flight in Ireland, we had to enter the general arrivals area so we went through Irish immigration and then went through security again. Showed our passports to several people. Finally, we went through U.S. “pre-clearance” with U.S. officials and they did some sort of facial recognition thing (they didn’t check our fingerprints but did with other people).
When we arrived in the U.S., we entered the general arrivals area without going through immigration or customs, and realized that we had actually done so in Ireland. I had never done this or heard of it before. Never had to say if we had anything to declare or if we had been on farms or if we had food products, etc.
Does the U.S. have this arrangement in a lot of countries? Does anyone know the rationale for it? it doesn’t seem particularly cost-effective to have U.S. immigration and customs personnel stationed in airports around the world.
In addition to Ireland, the US has a pre-clearance arrangement with Canada and some Caribbean countries. The advantage I think is that the flight can be treated just like a domestic flight when it arrives in the US, which among other things makes things much easier for people with onward connections in the US.
I think British Airways might have had some influence in getting pre-clearance in Shannon. They offer an all business class flight from London City Airport to JFK using an Airbus A318. Because of the short runway at London City the flight requires a fuel stop in Shannon (I’m not sure if an A318 would have the range for the flight with a longer runway). But since travelers can take care of US customs and immigration in Shannon while the plane is refueling, the total door to door time for business travelers starting their journey in central London is still shorter than that taking a non-stop flight out of Heathrow.
It’s called preclearance. It happens in Canada, Ireland, the UAE, possibly a couple of other places. It generally includes facilities for customs inspections as well as immigration checks. Evidently you weren’t subjected to customs inspections in Shannon, but you could have been.
It’s expensive, but it reduces congestion at US airports. Plus, it give the foreign airports that have it a competitive advantage, so I think the airport authorities subsidise it. The airlines like it too, since it reduces delays on arrival and makes it easier to schedule internal US flighs as onward connections for arriving passengers.
The US authorites have no enforcement powers outside the US, so if they find you in breach of US requirements they can’t arrest you, fine you, confiscate contraband or penalise you in other ways. You are simply denied boarding, which of course also saves the US authorities some money. If the reason you are denied boarding is, e.g, that you have a case full of cocaine the US authorities won’t arrest you but the local authorities will, and you’ll be dealt with for infringing local laws on the possession/trafficking of cocaine.
It started in Canada, which has a very large number of flights to the USA, many of which bring all or most of the scheduled international arrivals to their destination airports.
Like, if Toronto didn’t have preclearance, then the border station in Columbus, Ohio would need to increase its staffing to handle multiple year-round daily flights from Toronto, rather than seasonal weekly flights from Cancún. And there are several other airports with similar international traffic flows, where there are hundreds of passengers from Canada and none or almost none from any other international city.
What’s interesting is that there are an equal number of return trips, yet Canada has not chosen to implement preclearance in the US, even though the original preclearance agreement allows them to do so. My guess is because there are relatively few Canadian airports but a lot of US destinations, so it would be impractical to preclear the reverse flights.
In the reverse, the Cayman Islands implemented a preclearance process for Cayman Airways flights departing Miami for Grand Cayman. The program was the first instance of a foreign government preclearing immigration and customs on US soil.
It is a limited program as it does not cover flights by other airlines (American Airlines flies the same route) and only operates during peak periods. It was set up in an effort to relieve long wait times at Owen Roberts International Airport for passengers traveling during peak weekend times.
A US pre-clearance facility has been in Shannon since 1986 and the A318 wasn’t manufactured until 2001, so this doesn’t quite scan. But the Shannon facility only did immigration inspections (i.e., not customs inspections) until 2009, so maybe that’s what underlies the story you heard?
I had thought the pre-clearance there was much more recent, like after BA began offering that flight. But maybe you’re right, maybe it was specifically the customs facility. I would imagine without that there would still be some sort of inspection on the JFK end. With both immigration and customs pre-clearance the flight can effectively be treated like a domestic flight when it lands.
Everyone else has explained pre-clearance, but those whose fingerprints were checked might be members of Global Entry, which speeds one’s path through customs.
I’ve gone through preclearance a couple of times in Nassau Bahamas. It’s great not to have to drag your luggage through customs. Instead, I was asked to identify a photo of my luggage.
Some preclearance facilities are set up so that connecting passengers don’t have to lug their bags through a customs inspection unless they’re referred for a secondary inspection.
I don’t know why they can’t/won’t institute this at any domestic airports.
We ran into this a few years ago in Dublin. I wish I had known about it because we would have gone to the airport earlier. We darn near missed our flight home due to the extra time spent.
It must only be in Abu Dhabi. We were n Dubai last November and they weren’t doing it there.
Pre-clearance in Canada has been done for as long as I have been living here (50 years). A few weeks ago, I flew Montreal to Seattle through Vancouver. We had pre-clearance in Vancouver and no one so much as asked about our luggage. On the return, we went through immigration in Vancouver, but again our luggage was checked through and we were asked only if we had exceeded our duty free import allowance.
I’m a little surprised it’s available in Abu Dhabi (where Etihad is the dominant carrier) and not Dubai (where Emirates is the dominant carrier). I believe the Dubai airport is busier and would expect more flights to the US via Emirates than Etihad. But looking at the list of locations, it’s available in two airports in Ireland but not at Heathrow.
Interesting. I hadn’t heard that there was preclearance other than in Canada, but it makes sense.
For luggage, I have checked baggage in Canada, and only once was there a problem with the luggage system and they asked us to identify our bags on the cart after passport control - but nobody has ever asked us to open our bags. (I have had that stupid “your bag was checked by TSA” notice in my luggage on arrival). Usually you check you bags like for a domestic flight and go through passport control. Your boarding pass has the number of bags identified as yours. I think between Xray screening and all the data collected on travellers already, poking through suitcases is probably a waste of time for most travellers.
I think one time in Toronto I arrived on a domestic flight, we had to pick up our bags, carry them across about 50 feet to the next belt - probably to positively identify passenger to suitcase - then carry on to passport control.
In many European locations, where much of the airline traffic is international and goes through customs, they have an “outside customs” zone - you don’t have to go through customs if you are just transiting. (Hence the Tom Hanks movie about the guy trapped outside the customs area in CDG). The vast majority of airline traffic in the USA is domestic, and not that much is transiting through - they don’t have customs-free transit zones. Plus, especially from Canada, the airlines want to fly to a lot of American airports that otherwise don’t have flights from international destinations - so simpler and more efficient to treat Canadian flights as domestic - hence, pre-clearance at the take-off airport in Canada. I’m not sure how many airports actually have customs, I always imagined it was only the bigger cities. Preclearance in Europe or the Caribbean makes it simpler to allow flights to smaller US destination cities. After all, it’s not just customs officials - it’s the need for a screened off secure area between the gate and the customs kiosks, etc.
Even one time, going Vancouver to Sydney, we had a stop-over in Hawaii. We had to get off so they could refuel (safety regs?) so to do so, we had to go out of the plane, which then required us to go through customs, which took us outside security, then we had to re-enter security (plenty of sand in the area you take your shoes off in Hawaii) then back onto the plane.