Originally Posted by
tom911
The Administration wants to push out US border and other enforcement measures to: (a) further limit VWP country and/or US nationals from flying from (or via) Europe and possibly arriving in the US without the US physically vetting the passengers prior to flight; and (b) further limit people from less developed countries from arriving in the US and claiming asylum/refugee status.
Amongst other things, this US pursuit is meant to reduce: the possibility of the US aviation blacklists from being as readily evaded; and the possibility of fraudulent use of real passports to travel to the US.
I am not surprised our UK government lapdog agreed to this. I hope the other EU countries tell us to go pound sand rather than even taking steps to let us pay up for it in part or full (for then the US will just end up charging us more to travel internationally by hiking fees).
As long as the governments are having airport security screeners properly focusing on and engaging in effective interdiction of contraband weapons, explosives and incendiaries ("WEI") (via screening passengers, bags, cargo and other conveyance), and as long as the cockpits are secure, then I don't really care who is on my flight. Any bad actors missed by European authorities can be stopped without doing these CBP pre-clearance build outs -- stopped on arrival in the US and by effectively screening for WEIs prior to departure.
I find CBP PreClearance a time-wasting bottleneck way too often, and I find it unnecessary to secure my flights. If the UK does this, consider this another reason for me to minimize flying via the UK on my US-bound trips.
Originally Posted by
catocony
It's a garbage article. Instead of saying what it really is - you go through US immigration and customs in Britain, then the flights are treated as domestic flights when they hit the US.
It would certainly require a dedicated terminal for US flights, and I don't think that's possible at most airports. There are a huge number of flights to the US from there, on a lot of different airlines. An airline like BA would have a triple system of terminals/gates in use at LHR. One for US flights, one for domestic/CTA flights, and one for all non-US international flights.
Preclearance makes sense at the bigger Canadian airports, where a huge percentage of traffic is going to the US and on US carriers.
PreClearance may make sense at Canadian airports, but it's not going to make sense in the same way for flights from Europe. Even for flights from via Canada, CBP PreClearance can be a hassle.
As a matter of technicality, just because PreClearance agreements and implementation in one country allows for CBP immigration and customs clearance in the other country doesn't mean it will be allowed to work that way in all other countries. Canada allows for it, but it comes with some additional bottlenecks (even for someone with GE/NEXUS status) that wouldn't necessarily be there if CBP PreClearance wasn't part of the picture.
The reason Canada and the US went for CBP PreClearance was to further integration of the Canada-US passenger airline networks and to try to make things more convenient for passengers. This US push in Europe for this kind of facility is motivated by the government's paranoia; it is not motivated by an interest in making travel easier/faster.