hillrider

I recently got stranded by BA at YVR, and learned that you simply cannot connect there to a USA destination in the 110 minutes I had (a legal connection stemming from a misconnect at LHR).

Firstly, U.S.A. check-in is a completely separate zone that closes 60 (SIXTY) minutes prior to departure due to the fact that US immigration and customs is done right there and not on arrival in the U.S.A. As a result, you cannot simply drop your bags after doing Canada immigration and walk to the gate; you have to have them with you when you go to the U.S.A. check-in zone and, at least in my case, BA was unable to check me in for the connecting flight.

At YVR BA has a minimum connection time of 90 minutes to U.S.A. connections, which leaves exactly 30 minutes to:

• sit in the immigration line
• do immigration
• retrieve bags
• go through customs
• take the elevator to the upper floor
• walk to the U.S.A. check-in area
• have boarding pass issued or walk through the equivalent of conformance

Frankly, after writing this, it's super-silly that the MCT is only 90 minutes as even without bags you're highly unlikely to make it.

In my experience it took 65 minutes just to reach the U.S.A. check-in area, where all employees had already gone home.

The BA airport person basically told me that it's a known issue (??) and that every night several passengers miss their scheduled connections. On my day, her list of overnight accomodations was about 30 people long, and we were only 10 minutes late in arriving.

Message to BA: fix the problem and stop booking us on impossible connections (do they listen to the frequent fliers here on FT?)

Warning to FTers: never accept a connection at YVR to the U.S.A. with a layover of less than over two hours.

LeisureFirst

Thanks for the tip. Really, though, YVR ought to take a leaf out of the book of a seriously competitive international hub airport like SIN, where connecting passengers can have a tour of the city between flights within having to clear immigration once, let alone twice. Or give up on the idea.

International travellers seem to be an afterthought for most American airports. Flying into the US and connecting to another US destination is bad enough with their daft requirement to clear immigration and generally go landside then clearing security for the connecting flight. It's a long time since I've done it and particularly post-2001 has been best avoided. Getting out is fortunately easier.

Gaz

Having flown in and out of YVR a lot (from both the UK and the US), I agree it's really not sufficient.

Even if I'm flying to YVR (or another other Canadian city) to the US with just hand baggage, I'll get there 90 minutes before as the whole pre-clearaence can be very slow. Not to mention YVR isn't the quickest for either a) immigration clearance and b) baggage delivery.

Lovely looking airport though... so at least you can be relaxed by waterfalls and trees as you miss your connection.

Gaz

And sometimes ridiculously easy... at many of the hubs, domestic and international flights leave from the same concourse. A few times I've literally walked off an arriving domestic flight, walked about two gates along, and boarded my international flight home. Such a contrast from getting in.

Swiss Tony

There is some kind of peculiarity here to BA, insofar as other airlines (like AC) will interline bags and you never enter Canada, going straight from the arriving flight to US immigration.

http://www.yvr.ca/en/navigating-YVR/...rough-YVR.aspx

BA won't do this (I remember it being announced the last time I flew in on BA), although perhaps you can get away with it if you don't have checked baggage.

On that basis, this makes YVR one of the most connection-friendly airports in N. America, just so long as you're not flying in on BA...

LeisureFirst

At its best, air travel in the US was, as they say on that side of the pond, a breeze - as simple and stress-free as a late-morning tube journey. Anyone who ever took an intra-Hawaii flight pre-9/11 will have seen short-haul air travel as it should be with no worries about terrorism and every thought for making things simple for the passenger. (Of course AQ 243, probably the most famous of all such flights, was a bit of an exception.)

AllanJ

My gut feeling for a long time was that two hours is not enough time to clear customs at a connection point. YOu should be able to hand pick flights at original booking time that give you more connection time.

You mean to say that BA puts up many passengers overnight at the connection pont almost every day?

cornishsimon

I think that the OP misconnected at LHR and BA rerouted him via YVR onto his final american destination resulting in insufficient time to connect at YVR

However I could be wrong as thats just the way I read it

cs

Thunderroad

Sorry to hear about your experience, OP. But thanks for the warning.

HIDDY

We took the bus from YVR-SEA.....a lovely journey spoilt by shenanigans at the border. What is the problem there? One would think you were going across the N/S Korean border. We were the only bus there but it took the lazy sods over half an hour to finish their tea break and process us. They confiscated two tomatoes and a lemon from us. Think the guy who processed us was Canadian....the most dour faced sod I have ever met. All in all it took over one hour to get through.Our driver said she was stuck there for five hours once.

Just like to say on our recent travels in the US the TSA people at the airports were super efficient and very pleasant.

Globaliser

That's common to lots of countries!

It's the international-international arrangements in the US that are daft. It's almost as if you're being penalised for having the temerity to land on the hallowed ground when you have no desire or intention of staying there.

BlackCat

As an aside, even with bags going straight through (AC->UA in my case) and you have both boarding cards connection times can be fairly long. In my case I had 90mins to:

- Walk about 1km from the international stands to US immigration
- Go through Canadian boarding pass check
- Wait 10 minutes to identify my bag (they take a photo of it coming out of the plane, but if they are slow you need to wait)
- Wait 1 hour in line for US immigration moving at glacial speed
- Run to the US gates to find that my flight was delayed by an other hour

The unknown thing is US immigration at YVR -- seems to be as variable as any of the US airports.

BC

hillrider

That's exactly what happened.
If an airline says that a connection can be made at an airport I've never connected through, who am I to dispute this? Even more so when this was the only available reaccommodation option that "made sense" (on paper, as it turned out).
That is exactly what the BA agent lamented about, and given the facts I listed in my original post it's not difficult to see why. She even told me: "we've been telling London to stop sending us passengers connecting to the U.S.A., but they keep booking them".
That is correct.There was a sign at the bypass that implied that it was closed at the time I was there; in any case the sign did specifically list the airlines whose passengers are allowed to use it, and BA was not one of them. I presume that airlines have to pay something for the use of this bypass by their customers.

jerry305

I recommend the Amtrak train from Vancouver to Seattle or Portland.

Excellent SkyTrain service directly from YVR terminal into downtown Vancouver. Then Amtrak tickets about $50 one-way. Avoids some of the commuting in Seattle, as well. And stunning scenery along the way.

Happy

Isn't it there is only ONE train a day that departs in the morning ?

What are you going to do if you arrive YVR after mid morning?

Bus on the other hand runs several times a day.