The Canadian Flying Experience

When we arrived in Vancouver, we had about one and a half hours to clear immigration, collect our luggage and then check into the Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Toronto.

If you are familiar with important gateways in Canada and the USA, you will know that the queues are always long and it can take hours to gain admission. So there we were with about a hundred people in the queue and about four counters in operation.

I told my wife we would not be able to clear immigration and catch the Air Canada flight. So my wife approached one of those people who try to keep the crowd orderly but she told us that since that it was a domestic flight, we could just catch the next flight and she would only help those with international flights to catch. I just fail to understand her logic.

We had to catch two flights. One to Toronto and then another to Halifax. We should have requested the people in the queue to let us go first but we were just too tired to ask each of the hundred persons in turn.

By the time we cleared immigration we had too little time to catch the Vancouver-Toronto flight. However the immigration officer was quite friendly and after a few questions, we were told to “enjoy your stay.” This is one aspect I think that Malaysian and Singaporean immigration officers can learn to make tourists feel a little more welcomed.

When we got to the Air Canada counter, there was a problem with the ticketing and we were told to go to the ticket office where we learned that our Vancouver-Toronto booking had not been confirmed as there had been some discrepancy.

Luckily we could book a later flight at night that would get us to Toronto in the early morning and then Halifax before noon. The only drawback was that our cheap tickets from Toronto to Halifax had to be replaced with more expensive ones. It cost about C$400 extra for two of us.

I think for a safe margin, you should allow three to four hours to clear immigration at the point of entry to a foreign country before planning to catch the next plane at the same airport.

If you are lucky to clear earlier, you can then try to catch an earlier flight if there are no extra charges. That is definitely wiser than missing the plane and having to pay extra.

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