Originally Posted by
dcadwell
Tried that, but it's returning in the neighborhood of $16,000+. Strange.
Canadian customs is really that difficult? I never really had a problem in YHZ, but, that's a super-small airport, of course.
If you get some dates to show up on Google Flights that you like, try to just plug them straight in to Delta and then sort by DTW-only for connections. The first few times through I had the same issue before it would finally take. The return flight gave me a ton of problems on a lot of my preferred dates but I finally mixed and matched enough to get a few different itineraries I liked.
I've never done a positioning from the US to Canada for a flight that then transits back through the US so I'm not sure how customs and immigration will be. I don't believe you can stay air side so I assume I'll need to clear Canadian customs upon the arrival of my positioning flight, then pre-clear US customs in Toronto for the transit to Detroit which should mean no additional customs in DTW for the flight on to NRT. I'll probably just position the morning before anyway since that is a 0615 flight.
My June itinerary has a 70 minute connection in DTW on the way back though which seems awfully tight even though MCT is 60 for connections to Canada. If I cancel that one and just fly in August, it is a 6 hour layover so not really a big deal, would just need to do the reverse of before with one extra customs stop in there since I'm sure I'd need to do US customs on arrival to DTW, Canadian customs on arrival to YYZ and then pre-clear again for the return part of my positioning flight. I think it just sounds a bit more daunting than it actually is. I do have Global Entry so that should speed things up a bit.