bambinomartino

Not to open a new thread, this is a question about YEG.

Not sure how to look up Saturday's schedule but if it's anything like today, there will be UA to DEN at 06:00 followed by AC to SFO, on which we are flying Sept 3, and then WS to LAX at 08:15, but they don't seem to fly on Saturdays.

With a US departure schedule like that, I would imagine turning up at the airport shortly after 5am should be okay? No Nexus, etc. The SFO flight is basically sold out, but that's 70 or so passengers,

Anyone had experience with CBP at Edmonton recently?

asovse1

I usually use ExpertFlyer to look up a future date's departures from an airport

But given how Saturday = tomorrow, I'm gonna use FlightAware, instead, because I just need to click "next page" a few times and then I'll see the Sat scheduled departures:

https://flightaware.com/live/airport...etime;sort=ASC

(click previous page to go up if you're viewing this hours after I post this msg)

I see the Denver, Phoenix-Mesa, Nashville, and San Francisco flights in the first hour (from 0610) scheduled this Saturday. I have no idea how full those flights are, but from my pre-COVID experience from the 0700 DL departures YEG used to service, Preclearance was fast-moving but quite crowded at 0600.

The CBP website says the Preclearance facility opens at 4:30 AM (if they even bothered to update these hours recently), which will shoe in the "I-need-to-arrive-at-the-airport-three-hours-early" crowd into one big mass. Since 0500 is only half an hour after they open, I'm pretty sure you'd make your flight if you were in line by then.

No idea if the Global Entry queue is open yet, it was closed when I went thru in Feb

bambinomartino

Awesome, thanks.

The Denver and Phoenix-Mesa both depart at 06:00, so that crowd would have cleared by the time we get there, leaving only the 0630 to Nashville to contend with. Doubt it would be too full on this new Flair route, but who knows.

We will be in J. I can't remember the flow at the transborder in Edmonton. Do we go through security first and CBP next, and if so cutting in line with priority security, if they have it, might speed things up for us?

tuquee

Yep, security first, then CBP.

bambinomartino

An update and data point.

We walked in through the airport doors at 5:06. Had one item to check in, so made our way to the priority line, first in line. There was a young couple waiting at the desk for the agent to return from I don't know where. Next line over (non-priority) there was an agent on the phone seemingly waiting on hold to figure out something about an elderly couple's Pakistani (pretty sure) passports. The priority line agent returned after about 20 minutes, and it looked like that young couple's passports were also not Canadian. Then she processed another group of people on whose issue she'd worked before we had got there. 30 minutes later, it was our turn. A line of about 15 people behind us had already formed. No one at non-priority. No Elites showed up either, thankfully (I presume they get priority over Priority).

Security took but a minute. At CBP, the little passport scanning machines were cordoned off. Might as well, there was nary a soul. We went straight to the CBP officer, sweet and short. Arrived at the gate area at around 5:50.

The Plaza lounge at YEG transborder was closed, understandably.

mlondon

Thank you @bambinomartino for your update.

I'm US citizen flying tomorrow (a Thursday) from YEG-SFO. Flying AirCanada economy - Flight is at 7:30am
@bambinomartino took only 44 minutes from Door-to-Gate, but I can't count on that quick an experience.

Anyone else have experiences to share?
Two hours ahead of flight sounds excessive, but not interested in rushing or missing flight either.

Thank you.

bambinomartino

When I flew, the only flight we had an overlap with was the brand new, at the time, Flair flight to Nashville, which was probably rather light. You will have the 07:00 to Las Vegas, 07:30 to Palm Springs, 07:45 to Los Angeles and 07:50 to San Francisco on Flair. None of these flights are on Air Canada, so probably no delays at check-in desks, however hat's where the delay occurred for us, even though we were in Business. The more concerning issue for me is that there will be 5 planes' worth of passengers to go through CBP in that hour or so window, whereas in our case it was 1.5 planes. I would allow for some extra time.

mlondon

This is really helpful, thank you.
I’ll get there two hours early as it is Thanksgiving in US so maybe extra busy…

mlondon

Quick report.
Arrived YEG at 5:40am for 7:30am flight to SFO.
Used Self-Service kiosk to print luggage tag, then took bags to the US Baggage Drop. One of them was rejected because the tag was not "activated". Had to walk back to the checking counter where I cut to the front of the line and had the counter-staff scan my bag to activate it. What is the point of a self-serve kiosk if it requires going to the counter anyway?
Modest wait for screening, then zero wait for immigration.
Arrived at gate at 6:30 for a relaxed coffee and read before boarding at 7am

asovse1

Anyone know if the catch-all Plaza Premium Lounge in the YEG transborder area accepts AC elites? i.e. whether AC contracted them to allow elite access like the setup they have at YYC

asovse1

The answer is no. They don't have a contract with AC for elites

I didn't ask about business class but I have a feeling it'd also be 'no'.

Also flying the SFO flight, I had the exact same experience as mlondon two posts up

Arrive any later as the both of us had and there would have been larger queues for bag drop, and presumably have downstream effects on security and CBP. Four officers working today. We opted not to use Global Entry today, but they'd just have front-of-line access since the machines aren't activated in the morning (if they even came back at all since COVID)