US Customs has a presence at several Canadian airports (including Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver that I know about) to allow you to go through customs before you get on the plane. Then the plane can land at a “domestic” airport/terminal in the US.
I read somewhere that the treaty that permits this allows Canada to do the same thing at American airports. But thus far they have shown no interest in doing so.
Is there a reason why not? It seems like it saves a lot of time for travelers and Customs people for folks going in the Canada -> US direction. It is reasonable to assume that a roughly equal number of people travel in the opposite direction. It would also open up more Canadian airports to direct flights from the US (since they wouldn’t need to have Customs there.)
I’m going to guess that (1) there are many more airports in the US to which planes fly from Canada than vice versa, (2) since the US population is larger, more US citizens fly through Canada than vice versa, and (3) due to great circle routes going north in the northern hemisphere, it’s more often economical to fly from Europe or Asia to North America by going over part of Canada then on to the US than vice versa.
For all those reasons paying to staff US Customs clearing in Canada is more economical than vice versa.
It may have something to do with the fact that an awful lot of US airports have no facilities for receiving international flights, and so can only receive international flights from airports which have US preclearance facilities. Hence it’s in the interests of Canadian airports to offer these, since that hugely increases the number of US airports to which they can offer direct flights. And my guess is that the host airports support or subsidise the US customs facility in some way.
US airports don’t have the same motivation to support Canadian preclearance facilities, since there isn’t anything like the same number of Canadian airports which would be opened up to them by having preclearance.
Are a whole lot of airports ports of entry but without services for commercial flights? I know LaGuardia is, but is that common? An airport with no customs services at all can’t receive precleared flights, or at least it couldn’t a few years ago. An airline didn’t realize that was the case and had to cancel its new flight because the destination in the US wasn’t a port of entry at all.
Maybe it has changed recently, but I once took a flight (on a small line called Pilgrim) from Montreal to New Haven and I doubt that was an international airline. Frankly, this whole pre-clearance bit is a pain the butt. When I fly from Montreal to Seattle, if I choose to go through either Vancouver or Toronto, I would have to have to get my luggage at the intermediate point, schlep it through customs, recheck it, go through pre-flight inspection again and then get on the second flight. The lines at pre-clearance are usually an hour long (and are about to get worse as the sequester cuts take effect), so this requires at least a 2 hour layover and 3 is safer. I want to check my bags when I get on and not see them again till I get off. So I usually go through Chicago which has its own problems.
I was told it was a) economics and b) we (Canada) aren’t as worried about Americans illegally staying in Canada as the US is worried about Canadians illegally staying in the US. Another benefit of pre-clearance is that if you decline someone’s admission you can just turn them loose (unless they broke Canadian law, in which case you turn them over to the mounties). If they are already in the US when they got declined, you have to have facilities to hold them and then figure out how to get rid of them.
Hari, in Vancouver ur luggage goes straight thru to ur US flight now. U don’t have to pick it up any more. Toronto, u still have to.
I think this thought has merit. I flew from JFK to YYG, which certainly qualifies as other than a large airport, and they had full Canadian immigration and customs processing.
I’m guessing that the percentage of Canadian airport traffic that is international is greater than the corresponding percentage at US airports. After all, there are fewer major cities in Canada than the US - down here we have NY, LA, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Las Vegas, Cleveland, DC, Orlando, Atlanta, San Antonio, New Orleans, Anchorage, and it goes on and on and on.
Yeah, the number of Canadian airports where international flights usually land is pretty small -
What? Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver? Maybe St. John’s, Regina, Saskatoon, Victoria? Oh, and Gander I think - but not usually from the USA?