thank you

this is one issue. another thing that scares me is the on-time record of AC planes - more than half seems to be 1-2h late in taking off

That is very dependent on origin and destination. My flight today from YVR-YOW was around 20 min. late due to late passengers stuck in security. Allegedly, things are slowly starting to get better.

I flew out of Domestic, Priority last week around 12 pm (departing on AC 8506) and myself and my travel companion were literally the only people in the security screening area. That's a first for me.

There were a lot of very bored looking CATSA people.

News is that an $8/hr bonus for the summer has expired starting Sunday so workers aren't coming in.

Expect more chaos as the contractor (Allied Universal) has proverbially drawn a line in the sand. Add to that the unions have been w/o a contract for nearly 1 1/2 years.

https://vancouversun.com/news/yvr-se...ace-discipline

Well, that should make my 08:00 flight on Sunday that more interesting....

didnt have to go through security screening again once arrive in YVR if connecting flight is domestic within canada. is that standard across all canada airports (implicit trust in US screening) ?

ITD OSS (International-to-Domestic One Stop Security) is in place in YVR and YYZ - not sure about YUL.

Didn’t realize there was a bunch of changes at YVR. Last time doing INTL-DOM was back in April.
New connections facility was interesting, I’m sure it’ll end up saving some time when the normal immigration is packed(which I’ve never seen it packed??). Of course the connections security wasn’t open so they dumped me out at landslide domestic. Apparently I wasn’t automatically enrolled into OSS since I was connecting from WS to AC from USA.

Also didn’t realize C gate security has changed to NEXUS/PRIO only, went and got a paper boarding pass with a green sticker. Absolutely no people in C gate security, lots of security personnel doing a whole lot of nothing. I think having all of the Dom Y pax clearing over at A gates might be artificially making the lines worse.

First time doing US preclearance at YVR - is it usually busy on Sunday mornings?

Depends what time in the morning. There are a lot of flights that depart in the 6am to 8am period, preclearance is normally quite busy until after that rush has passed.

Haven’t done transborder to YVR and connecting to a domestic flight since before Covid. How is that working now?

I know one clears customs in YVR. Do we still collect bags and put them on transfer belt or just identify them on computer to CBS official?

In the past, there was an elevator from the customs area up to security for connecting pax (not sure that security area was called). Is that still the case?

Anything to be aware of to get thru as quickly as possible?

We've used the in-transit connections facility at YVR, it's great.
The key question is whether or not you are flying with a participating airline and your connection qualifies. For example, flying AC from the U.S. and connecting to AC domestically does. Flying United from the U.S. and connecting to a domestic AC flight does not. Check with your airline.
If your flights qualify, you stay upstairs and use the connections facility. Do NOT go downstairs into the main customs hall. Your bags will be automatically transferred. You make your declarations upstairs and then proceed to your domestic gate. Coming from the U.S. under this process you do not have to be rescreened for security because Canada treats U.S. aviation security as equivalent.
There are staff at the connections facility who will check your boarding passes for both your inbound and onward flight. If you don't qualify they will send you downstairs.
The other key is not to have any reason to answer YES to any of the customs questions. For example, if you exceed any of your allowances or you have any sort of questionable food/meat/produce you will be sent downstairs to the main customs area and your bags will be recalled from the baggage system for CBSA inspection.

[MENTION=10130360]TravellingChris[/MENTION], many thanks. Had an AC to AC connection and it was exactly as you report. I did check food on my declaration (online in advance) and on the manual declaration upon arrival (a story). No one seemed to care or ask any questions. What I had was allowable.

I also have Nexus and used that queue upstairs. The machine didn’t read my card. Reported this to the CBSA. He could not get either of their machines to read my passport, hence the need to fill out one of those old forms. He informed me there had to be a receipt from the machine and when there isn’t one, they resort to the manual system. Other people seem to not have machine issues and neither CBSA person on duty at the time could explain why it didn’t work.

Not a problem for me other than wasting time. Prior to Covid I always had to redo security there so this was a huge improvement.

Any chance this was a new or replacement card? I didn’t notice I was supposed to activate my replacement card, as it came in the mail the night before a trip - just peeled it off the letter and took it with me. When coming home through YVR the machine wouldn't read it, so I mentioned it to an officer, saying it was a brand new card. They weren't at all concerned, just said their machines were terrible (passport scan worked on machines with 100 questions, so I was told to get a printout that way). Two days later, using the Nexus lane to travel to the US, I was sent to secondary to get it activated because the RFID readers don't work without that online activation. It was painless and fast, but I still felt like an idiot for missing that step.

nomadic.relief - Good safety tip.

Oddly enough, I didn't have this issue with my new card - I think.

This was before Xmas, but I tried my card coming back into Canada and it didn't seem to work, so went to the CBSA officer and they scanned it. I've had zero issues either way since. So maybe they activated it as part of that process. Dunno.