cruzcap

but be carefull... in the US I tried getting into a pre-check line with my NEXUS at FLL and the guy said no..doesn't really make sense as we are the most secure travellers...

hazcaddy

Showing your NEXUS card will do nothing. You have to have the Pre-Check mark on your BP and that requires that a) the airline participates, b) the airport participates, and c) your Trusted Traveller number is in the airline's reservation system for that flight.

tkyoshi

Correct, and it's not a guaranteed thing every time either.

nowinyow

Went through YYZ last evening and experienced the NEW Nexus lanes!
Wow!! I almost felt like a law-abiding citizen upon finishing!

nowinyow

To my knowledge, AC is not one of the participating airlines in the States. However whenever I book flights on UA, I get the TSA approved on my boarding pass.

FlyerGoldII

I will be going to USA via YYZ in 9 days on AC. I look forward to this new lane.

Unlike PreCheck, where the boarding pass must state that one is eligible for that lane and resulting decreased security assessment (ie not every trusted traveler has to get PreCheck), I gather that nothing is stated in the boarding pass, and all nexus card holders (what about GE card holders from USA who do not have nexus) are eligible?

Any signs indicating that one does not have to remove shoes, nor laptops, nor liquids?

astroflyer

Yes it's not dependent on boarding pass, you just get your card checked at the entry to the Nexus Lane.

In my experience, I've shown my global entry card and never been refused entry at a Nexus Lane, but now that I have Nexus, I haven't tried recently. You do have to have the physical card to get the benefit, unlike Pre-check.

And yes, there were signs indicating what to do.

yulhammeryyz

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.2.0.1791 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Worked great today

flyquiet

Okay, well, that was underwhelming.

Yes, you can keep your shoes and jacket on, laptop in bag, liquids in bag, etc. but that doesn't mean that half a dozen illiterate people in front of you won't be stripping. Even after being told by the guard to leave the damn stuff on and in.

Worst was the utter disorganization of the queue. There was a line of about 30 people when I arrived, filing into the archway that has three headings: Priority (with *G logos and Amex), NEXUS, and Crew.

Each heading corresponds to a physical FENCE separating three distinct channels each leading to a scanner. Well, I am availing myself of NEXUS and the line is leading to the left lane not the middle lane, so the line must be for Priority, right?

So I waltz through beneath the NEXUS heading in the middle and arrive at the stack of bins, only to be chewed out by a supervisor-looking guy. "You need to line up to get your boarding pass checked." (points to line). (Me, assuming he meant under the NEXUS sign) "There was nobody there, so I assumed the person that did that was in here." "That line is NEXUS." "The sign says 'Priority'." "It is NEXUS." "Whatever." People keep talking at me while not looking at me and walking in random directions, so I am not entirely sure what anyone is telling me to do. Nobody looks at the BP to see the "deaf" on it. Do I have to wear a special hat? Anyway, he frogmarches me back to the back of the line, behind 30 people.

The BP-checker also moved to between the Priority and NEXUS signs at some point and as I passed this point, it seemed perhaps an additional checker was moving in, but I was not sure if it was replacing or adding. It absolutely needs two separate checkers. I also noticed that the ACTUAL Priority queue leading to a scanner is NOT under this archway, but is directed off toward the left, into a snake that is concealed within the larger general-admission snake, and which possibly leads to a naked scanner.

When I get to the archway, the BP-checker pointed nonspecifically at the two machine-feeding queues, but I know that only the RIGHT one is the pilot program that has the coats-on-laptops-in method, so I justify my choice because the left lane still correspond in my mind to Priority with NEXUS on the right, so I choose the right lane, and end up behind a NEXUS-having E35K who can't read or who really likes going barefoot in airports, I'm not sure.

There was what looked like an industrial engineer with an iPad watching the usage of the bag scanner by the passengers. One hopes that they will address the user instructions and improve the flow.

astroflyer

Sorry it was disorganized for you...it's only been a week, let's give them a chance. Passengers will also slowly learn. I absolutely love TSA Pre in the US now. I came in at a fairly quiet time on the first day and the BP checker had abandoned her post...I just went straight ahead up to the line.

yoohoo

Went through this morning at YYZ and it was an absolute mess at the nexus pre check lane.

About 4 people were getting through all the other non pre check lanes for every person they were putting through this allegedly special one.

I asked the CATSA lady doing the BP check and she gave a very poor assessment of how the trial was going so far. Basically she said it was all due to the laptops being in the bag, leading to screeners spending much longer trying to determine what was in the bag...

This was validated by the fact that almost every single laptop bag was shunted to the swab check lane, and rooted through by the bag checked at the other end.

All in all I definitely will be sticking to the normal lanes once through nexus in the future.

Absolute

I found it disorganized last week, but more out of confusion. The sign describing the new trial was past the bins, so out of habit we all started pulling our items out to save on time when we get to the bins... only to be told to repack it all. That was the slowest part, as it wasn't properly advertised at first!

I saw no issues with laptops though - they were very efficient from what I saw, taking less time than the domestic scanners usually do, without any swabbing.

Again, this was Wednesday last week though, so perhaps they've had to make changes this week.

astroflyer

Did the sign say it was a "trial" or was this a permanent change. I really hope it's the latter.

Absolute

The sign did state that it was a trial, but I didn't see any details about the timing of it. I'm guessing it's for a "as long as we think it's working", so that they can pull the plug if those issues mentioned above keep causing problems.

flyquiet

I would say that I hope pre-check like experience is a permanent service, but I sure don't hope THIS service is the permanent one. It needs a lot of process improvement.

That said, there was an analyst there observing the process a week ago, and I hope they do make the required improvements. I could certainly give them free advice as I am sure many here could also do. But we can hope they are also smart enough to figure it out.