Mountain Explorer

What kind of nonsense is this?? The fact that they were kept in a sterile part of the airport has everything to do with it. I promise you that if the passengers had spent the day shopping in Whitehorse, buying lots food and wine, then touring local farms and visiting the zoo, that CBP would have screened them. The reason that CBP agrees to treat it as a domestic flight is exactly what I said: the passengers were not allowed to leave the airport and so, for all practical purposes, they never entered Canada.

IluvSQ

Canada does not have any pre-clearance facilities anywhere in the world.
The U.S. does operate numerous pre-clearance facilities in Canada.

Chugach

YXY is a port of entry for Canada for the aforementioned DE flights plus some scheduled JNU-YXY summer flights on X4. On top of general aviation traffic to/from Alaska.

Thanks for the insight! Makes sense then why they didn’t go to JNU. Anybody can use the FAA approach for JNU, which is why I thought it would have been an option even though DL only sends the 738 there on scheduled service.

miguel0881

Sorry, but you are wrong. Anyone who touches a foreign point MUST be inspected by CBP upon arrival to the USA, regardless of reason for leaving the USA, time spent outside the USA, and location within the foreign country. Do you think that US flight crews on immediate turns between US and Canadian airports do not have to clear CBP upon return to the USA? Newsflash: they do!

ND76

I went to Whitehorse in June, 2014. I flew Delta DCA-DTW-SEA-JNU and return; this was one of the first days that Delta offered SEA-JNU service, to directly compete with AS when AS turned down Delta’s merger overtures. I was a lowly GM at the time, and only got upgraded on the SEA-JNU (incredibly, I won gate lotteries for all three segments going home on a Saturday). The SEA-JNU flight was noteworthy because Delta served about the most delicious thing I ate on an airliner in years, a hot ham and swiss sandwich; and because of the dramatic approach to JNU. I was seated on the left hand side of the 757, and I was paying attention to Mendenhall Glacier as we crossed a ridge on one of the islands west of the airport and then went on a fairly steep descent before landing on runway 8.

JNU is probably 10 highway miles from the center of Juneau; I was able to take a public bus (I think I had to walk about 3 blocks from the terminal building to the road where the bus stop was located) and go down to the ramshackle Alaskan Hotel (which I had seen on a TV program). I overnighted there, which was close to my objective, the Alaska capitol building (I was close to finishing a photo project I had started in 2008, visiting all 50 state capitols). After getting a good tour of the building (sadly, the Senate chamber was closed because they were doing seismic retrofitting at the time), and doing the Mount Roberts aerial tramway, I got back on the public bus, went out to the Safeway near JNU and bought a picnic lunch, and then took a taxi to the Alaska Marine Highway ferry station on Auke Bay a few miles northwest of JNU, and caught the state-owned ferry service for Skagway, which I reached about 6.5 hours later (as it turned out, there are passenger seaplanes that regularly fly between the cruise ship harbor next to downtown Juneau and Skagway). If you like total sensory overload, this trip is for you.

I overnighted at the Westmark hotel in Skagway. There was about an hour wait to check-in, so I walked through the town (year-round population about 800) and found a brewpub at the end of the street. This particular hotel was really clean and cozy; it was quite a bit nicer than the Westmark property in Whitehorse where I stayed the next night (although the food and the Yukon Brewing Company beer in the hotel there were quite good).

The next morning I took the White Pass & Yukon Route R.R. narrow gauge train, entering British Columbia after about 18 incredible miles, and then continuing on through Bennett Lake, BC, crossing the 60th parallel and entering Yukon a little bit after that, and then terminating in Carcross, Yukon (population 300), where a bus met us for the last 45 miles into Whitehorse. When I visited, Yukon (geographically similar in size to California) had 38,000 residents, 28,000 of whom were located in Whitehorse. The Westmark was about a three-four block walk from where the bus dropped us off.

Sunrise was probably 4 am, and because the bus back to the border (our train picked us up there), I spent about 3 hours wandering around the city in 38F weather, finding refuge in a Tim Horton’s with an operating fireplace. The trash cans on the street there all have metal latches, so that bears can’t forage in them. I was able to photograph the outside of Yukon’s government building where its 15 member legislature sits. I saw airplanes taking off from YXY, which is west of the center of the city.

It took about 13 hours by bus, rail, ferry and taxi back to JNU, about 210 surface miles in all; simply indescribably beautiful. I couldn’t get a hotel room in Juneau (there was a tribal convention in town), so I slept in the airport (in a corner where payphones used to be). I woke up about 4 am and a police officer was standing over me. I started talking to him, and it turned out that his daughter lived in Fairfax, Virginia, so he and I became fast friends.

The flight back to the lower 48 left at 6 am, and I was on it.

Mountain Explorer

They arrived early this morning at SEA Gate B7, which is not an international arrivals gate. They were not screened

miguel0881

Um, were you there? Just because they did not use an international gate doesn't mean there wasn't a CBP officer on hand as the pax deplaned. And, in any event, you better believe the flight manifest was transmitted to CBP, as for any international flight.

DLASflyer

Thanks for the inside scoop. Just curious, what other stations are "special qual" in the DL system? I've heard JAC is.

Chugach

Not to split hairs but that was the ferry flight for the broken plane. The rescue flight arrived at SEA at 23:19 local...also at gate B7.

Mountain Explorer

Thanks! I was wondering why they waited so late

PurdueFlyer

There is actually an FAA publication, which I assume all of the major carriers must mirror, plus any other airport they feel warrants additional training.

https://fsims.faa.gov/PICDetail.aspx...C%20QA-May2018

but the heavy hitters are pretty much all of the Ski Country markets (JAC/EGE/HDN/MTJ/BZN) & anything else with obstructions or mountainous terrain. GIG/UIO/BOG/GUA/SJO/TGU/STT/SXM are the big int'l ones. DCA for the short runway and airspace procedures. I think DL has several "levels" of special qual importance, and the level of training and currency escalates depending on the level. IE, Ontario CA is technically special qual, but nobody is doing sim rides or riding with a line check airman to be able to fly to ONT. Places like EGE and SJO, different story. I am not sure where JNU falls on that spectrum.

flyerCO

Not clearing into Canada is different from not entering Canada. CBP could if it wants require the plane/passengers be cleared. No different from someone who was denied entry to Canada still needing to go back through US immigration.

mot29

Thanks for sharing your adventure.

bennos

The act governing preclearance allows either country to set up facilities. If there were enough Alaska to Canada traffic, Canada could (theoretically) set up preclearance at, say ANC.

Several years ago I was on a DTW-HKG flight that diverted to YFB due to a sick passenger. CBSA agents monitored the plane while the passenger was offloaded at YFB, then (long story short) we returned to DTW where we arrived as a domestic flight (ie: we deplaned post-security airside, not on the international arrivals level) and there were no US CBP agents present.

WindowSeatFlyer

Since it's a scheduled flight, they'll schedule immigration/customs to be on site.