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sjc said:
EDIT: I wonder if they start flying from multiple Canadian cities, will they press for Canada to open Canadian pre-clearance in US cities like Boston, New York and/or Chicago? With preclearance, they could do BOS-YSJ-YFC without having to let everyone out of the plane in YSJ to run them through customs.
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Do we have preclearance, currently, in any cities? I am a moderate traveler but I have always cleared Canadian customs on Canadian soil.....am I missing something?
 
TOareaFan said:
Do we have preclearance, currently, in any cities? I am a moderate traveler but I have always cleared Canadian customs on Canadian soil.....am I missing something?
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No. That's pretty much a unique US program offered only to certain countries.

sjc said:
No, there is not currently any Canadian preclearance in the US, but I am pretty sure Canada is allowed to setup pre-clearance if they want to.
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Not really. The US Congress would have to agree to facilitate such operation under their legal system. Our government passed specific legislation allowing for US customs agents operating in a pre-clearance are to do things like conduct searches, screen passengers, etc. The US requires country's wishing to have pre-clearance facilities to legislatively enable such operations. Likewise, we would have to do the same in the US if we wanted to setup pre-clearance there.

And there are probably way too many US destinations and too few travellers to Canada to make that worthwhile.
 
I found this in the backgrounder for the Preclearance Act

Although Canada has not chosen to operate preclearance at United States airports, the Preclearance Agreement between Canada and the United States is fully reciprocal. Furthermore, the Preamble of the Preclearance Act makes clear that statutory authority for preclearance is “on a reciprocal basis.”
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While it would probably take legislation in Congress, that is not impossible if there is sufficient interest. I don't know that many people have been pressing for Canadian preclearance, though.

And there are probably way too many US destinations and too few travellers to Canada to make that worthwhile.
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You wouldn't need to put preclearance in at all US airports, just a few that have a lot of flights to Canada.
 
This blog has some pictures of the new terminal, showing the check-in area (14 booths), main lounge and the US baggage claim area (the Canadian baggage machine is a "flat"-type machine, but similar in size).

Note that the waiting area shown will be the Canadian departure lounge, once they open up the separate US departure lounge later this year. For now, everyone will use the same lounge.

re:Toronto

EDIT: With 150,000 square feet and 10 gates (when phase II is done in the fall), I wonder how YTZ will rank in Canadian airports in terms of airport size. There are a lot of airports in Canada that don't have 10 gates. It has probably moved up the rankings in terms of scheduled flights as well. If they maintain 200,000+ passengers for three years, will the National Airports Policy kick in and would they look at converting the TPA into an airport authority?
 
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I think YTZ will fall under the NAS either this year or the next. Then you're right, it could be converted into an airport authority and will stop receiving its subsidy. It will make those arguments about the lack of a business case that those Community AIR activists have been making look even more lame. They keep talking about Porter's planes are half empty (rarely the case) while ignoring the fact that if Porter has about 30 passengers on each flight, they're breaking even or even making a profit.
 
No reason to convert to an airport authority as it already has a federally appointed board to manage it that seems to be doing fine.
 
Darwinkgo said:
No reason to convert to an airport authority as it already has a federally appointed board to manage it that seems to be doing fine.
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Fair enough. The major impact of being included in the NAS though is the end of subsidies and the expectation that the airport (by whatever model it is governed) will be self-sufficient.
 
It is self sufficient now no? The TPA is turning a profit. Do small airports gets a national subsidy or something?
 
I don't think the TPA gets any regular federal subsidies for the airport (although the airport might be eligible for capital improvement funding under specific programs).

Does the National Airports Policy only apply to airports that are/were federally owned? I don't think the Island Airport has ever been federally owned, but instead run by the Harbour Commission/TPA, so perhaps they can be left to their own devices (and out of the hands of the GTAA).

When the TPA was losing a money a few years ago, was it the city that was responsible for picking up the difference?

A somewhat unrelated question: City Express was apparently moving up to 400,000 passengers a year back in the 1980s. Did they do that using the old Maple City ferry and the original terminal? It must have gotten very crowded.
 
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sjc said:
When the TPA was losing a money a few years ago, was it the city that was responsible for picking up the difference?
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Not to my knowledge - unlike with the old Habour commission which was receiving subsidies. The TPA however did receive as part of lawsuit settlements yearly payments from the City, until relations broke down. The new settlement signed last year has extraordinary payments and land transfers back and forth ending in 2011. After that only PILT payments to the City, and habour use fees to the TPA will flow between the two.
 
Thanks for that info. So this means that, while the TPA was "money losing", they have been able to continue operating using what they had in the bank plus various payments from lawsuits, land transfers and such and not any direct subsidies (lawsuit payments are not subsidies).
 
If an airport does not fall under the National Airports System, then they are eligible for operating subsidies. They are expected to be financially independent after joining the NAS. The NAS also brings benefits though: greater support for customs facilities, air navigation aids, etc.
 
Nice but not entirely useful until they finish all the work and fully segregate domestic and US bound passengers.
 
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