VanniFucci
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
Review: easy, but long delay at baggage (for connecting flight)
We were flying from Edmonton to Vancouver to LAX. POE was thus in Vancouver, at the YVR airport. We had a 1 hr, 19 min layover in YVR, which I thought would be enough. It turns out that it was, but just barely. Due to COVID, the airport was nearly empty. So security wasn't the issue. But, the first hurdle is the large amount of walking, since you have to exit the domestic terminal to get to the international terminal. This wouldn't be an issue if your first flight was from YVR (e.g. you live in Vancouver and were flying from there). But since we were connecting in from Edmonton, we had this ~15 minute walk.
The next thing, which is the major delay, was that you have to wait outside of the international terminal security check until your checked bags from your previous flight have been processed. I don't know if they just need to wait for the bags to leave the previous plane, or for them to enter the international area of the airport, or if they have to make it all the way to the next plane. But we were told to sit and wait in the section just before the international terminal security check until our names came up on the TV screen. This was about 30 minutes after we got to this section, or about 45 minutes since we landed (and with only about 35 minutes until our flight to the US was scheduled to leave. We had two checked bags, and the first one was processed quite quickly, according to the airport staff member who operates this checkpoint. The other bag took a long time and was not showing up in the system. I explained the situation to him: that we didn't just need to go through security, but through the secondary inspection for visa activation. Maybe he could just let us go ahead now to get that started and the bags will catch up? But he was adamant that he could not let us and that the US Customs officers would see on their end that our bag wasn't processed. Eventually, he actually had to call the baggage team (or someone) to check on the bag's whereabouts, and eventually got permission to let us go in.
Once we were in to security, it was a complete breeze to get to the Immigration stand, since no one's using the airport. We were ushered into secondary, where we waited for about 20 minutes before an officer called us over. Once he did, it was only a few minutes, 5 at most, before we were approved to proceed. So we rushed on to get to our gate. At the end, I think we got to the gate with about 7 minutes to spare. I'm not sure what would've happened if we were delayed 7 more minutes, but I'm glad to be over that now.
About the checked bags delay, I'm not sure if this is due to COVID or some other reason. Maybe this is normal proceedings? I've never flown from Canada to the US with checked bags before.
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Port of Entry Member Review #17200
Entry Date: 2021-03-16