How a Preclearance Facility Almost Caused Me to Miss My Flight
Caroline Lupini January 09, 2019
Did you know that sometimes when you are flying back to the United States, you’ll actually go through immigration and clear customs before you board your flight? That’s right. The United States operates preclearance facilities in a handful of different locations around the world (many Canadian airports, Dublin and Shannon, Ireland, a couple in the Caribbean, and Abu Dhabi).
Preclearance is generally said to be a great thing. I mean hey – you get to go through immigration and customs when you’re waiting at the airport for your flight anyway so that when you land you can exit the airport faster and be on your way.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of preclearance because with Global Entry, clearing immigration and customs takes hardly any time at all when I’ve arrived at my destination. Plus, usually, once you pass through preclearance, there are no more airport lounges that you can visit. I would much rather spend my time waiting at the airport in a lounge!
After my most recent experience with preclearance, I’m even less of a fan.
I usually don’t check bags, so I’m not sure if this experience was a total fluke or a more regular occurrence — hopefully, some of you can weigh in!
I landed in Toronto on my way back from Australia. Between my boyfriend and I, we had three checked bags (that’s what Christmas shopping while traveling will do!). When we entered the preclearance area, we had to visit a kiosk which told us that we needed to go to the bag processing waiting area and wait for our bags to be finished processing before we could continue to immigration.
Now, typically when you fly back into the US, you’ll have to claim your bag at your first port of entry and re-check it to your final destination within the US. But in Toronto, all of that happens behind the scenes. You merely need to wait until your bag has finished processing until you can go through. It sounds great.
But what happens if your bag hasn’t finished processing? You have to wait. What if your flight is leaving soon? Doesn’t matter, you still have to wait! We had to wait over an hour from the time we got to the bag processing area until the third of our bags finished processing. At this point, we had less than 20 minutes until our flight was supposed to leave and we still needed to go through immigration and make our way to the gate.
Amazingly, we somehow made it in time (though unfortunately our bag still ended up missing the flight – it was delivered the following evening).
I find it to be kind of crazy that we were held up and almost missed our flight because our bag was still processing. And we would have been stuck overnight in Toronto, too!
To be fair, I honestly don’t know what would happen if a similar situation occurred at a regular US port of entry (like Chicago or LAX). If you had a checked bag that hadn’t come out yet, but you were going to miss your flight, would you leave your bag there? Would you be able to go through immigration? If so, would you have issues getting your bag back? I’m not sure.
Have you had experience with slow bags when arriving back into the US (or a preclearance facility) that caused you to miss or almost miss your flight? Tell me about it in the comments!
[Image: Flickr/CBP International Travel Preclearance Operations in Canada]
You’re Reading
Missing bags turned out to be a real problem for me last year: was flying YUL-JFK-HEL-SIN on a business class Finnair ticket with the first leg operated by AA. Was selected for a secondary inspection at the Global Entry lane, but by this point, American Airlines had already lost my luggage. The bags showed up 3.5 hours later, after I had missed the first flight. While in the holding pen, I was specifically banned from calling the airline, or speaking with an AAgent in person to change my reservation. AY refused to rebook me, since I was marked as a no show. AA refused responsibility, as "baggage is handled by the airport, not us." This whole thing turned out to be a real nightmare scenario to sort out, which it turned out neither platinum status nor showing up 3.5 hours early granted me immunity from!
Another non-American here who loves pre-clearance, although I tend to prefer it if I can arrange my itinerary so that I'm not connecting through YYZ or YUL to the US, since this means the layover is 'busier' with more things to get through. If the connection time is tight, I will try to arrange it so that I can overnight on the layover so as to get more time to preclear. When preclearance is done in 'my' airport, it is a breeze. I land in the US as a domestic passenger, and if I have a connecting flight onward, I am a lot less stressed as I can sprint for the connecting plane, my formalities done and over with. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you flew with three bags full of additional goodies during the very busy Christmas period. This would have held you up even were you a Canadian returning to Canada via YYZ. It is not an encroachment on sovereignty, as it was done with the host country's enthusiastic agreement. The host country perceives it as an advantage for travelers, which it is.
Missed bags are not a rarity on incoming international flights and the system is quite straightforward. You report it to the airline and make your customs declaration in writing. The airline then takes responsibility for transporting the bag through customs when it arrives and eventually delivers it to you. While not the most convenient if you need something from the bag in short order, it really is not that complex and there is thus no reason to miss a flight over this sort of mix up.
Hey, r m a h, if you are going to be the Grammar Police, perhaps you need to work on your grammar first. Google MUGS and take a refresher crash course. Not as exciting as a John Greene crash course in history, but probably just as effective.
The original article author and a suprisingly large proportion of the commentators seem not have the foggiest idea of the two-step process that was occuring from an International arrival to a US pre-cleared departure via YYZ. In addition, there are significant misconceptions as to what US pre-clearance entails and allows. Insufficient time to go into the details, but this article is simplistic in the whole.