This would be a wonderful idea. I'd love to see St. John's and an easy stopover would be the perfect way to do it. Malaysia used to do that too and generated a lot of tourism through it.

Air Canada has the same program, but it is unfortunately limited to people flying through Toronto.

Someone said earlier that it's also available for Montreal and Vancouver.

They also have a program that gives you free or discounted hotel rooms if you have a 6+ hour layover (or something like that), which is available in Montreal and Vancouver. The article I saw about the 7 day program seemed to suggest it was only for Toronto, though.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/air-c...free-1.2579688

That may have been the cause of the confusion then. It would be nice if they'd extend that program so that all airports with overseas flights had it - Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and St. John's.

AC want's to push intl' travel through their 3 international hubs, YYZ, YVR and YUL, so I doubt you'll see it at any of their other airports any time soon.

Oh, I know they want that, though I wouldn't be surprised if a recovered Calgary becomes their fourth international hub at some point.

I'm not sure Canada/Air Canada is really big enough to have 4 international hubs, 3 is already a little silly as it is. Only reason there are three at all is the strong European preferences of Quebec travelers/legacy of international service at YUL and the geographic separation of the west/Asian ties of YVR. Otherwise everything would run through YYZ.

That and the separation is quite large at this point. YUL and YVR, ACs two smaller international hubs both see 30,000 and 43,000 international seats respectively per week from Air Canada and their star alliance partners. YYC sees only 6,500 and that gulf is likely to grow in the coming years not shrink, so the growth to get YYC to a defacto hub status would need to be monumental.

Yeah. Not every hub needs to be an international super connector (I believe the model Air Canada is trying to copy from AMS in YYZ), or an intercontinental gateway airport. Calgary can be Denver. Calgary only lacks the overseas destinations that Denver has to Reykjavík–Keflavík (which services Edmonton), and Munich.

I didn't really mean to say it would become a super mega hub, just that it will probably become the de facto prairie gateway to international destinations.

The impression I get as a traveller is that Toronto is the de facto Canadian tier one superhub, while Vancouver and Montreal are tier two niche hubs focused on Asia and Western Europe respectively. Calgary would be tier three - an important airport with a good basic selection of international destinations but not really a key linchpin in the network. The analogy to Denver is apt in that regard.

Yes I agree with that.

I hate the new automated luggage check-in machines at Pearson. Not because I had an issue using them but of the other passengers did causing a huge line up. These are only in terminal 3 near the US customs entrance.

Picture from the Toronto Star.
https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/...p.1086x724.jpg

They can't possibly be worse than those god-awful landing card machines you have to use when arriving at Pearson from overseas... can they?

(Seriously.. it's 2016... can we stop with those damn landing cards already?

They have those at U.S customs as well in some cities. I'm not sure it's a Pearson only thing in Canada as it would be federal laws that put them in place. But ya I hate those as well.

Pearson is the only airport I've ever used to enter Canada... no idea what it's like at other Canadian airports but I imagine it's the same, as you said.

Those machines were invented by YVR. One of the YVR airport subsidiaries is actually the tech company that sold them into most of the Canadian and US airports that have the technology.

They are great. I do like the US version of the machine more than the Canadian. The US does not use cards any more, they ask all the questions online. The Canada customs version scans the card.

As a side note, YVR has several subsidiaries. I think they create a new one every couple of months. Their subsidiaries get involved in everything from managing other airports, developing Health and Safety programs for LaGuardia to running cargo terminals. Building kiosks is weird but it provides revenue to keep landing fees low so be it.

I can understand filling out a landing card for countries where I'm not a citizen but to get into my own country? Silly.

Well, it already is...

Ya that seems about right, though with specialized long and thin planes both YVR and YUL seem to be increasing their routes to non-niche locations like Delhi for YVR and Beijing for YUL.

That and flying to YYZ/YUL from the west to go to Europe makes absolutely no sense as it's completely out of the way, which is why you see a decent amount of Europe seats out of YVR & YYC (just under 30,000 seats per week in the summer for YVR and 12,000 for YYC).

Ya that one is just ridiculous. When I first got my Nexus I didn't fill one of the cars out because I thought the new machines asked the same questions (they do) yet the customs agent still gave me the gears for not filling it out even while admitting it is the same information they already collected.

The ones at YVR at least in the domestic section don't look like anything more then a drop off for you luggage. The new ones at YYZ need to scan your boarding pass and the tag on your suitcase needs to lay flat so the machine can scan it as it goes through. You also need to answer a few questions when prompted by the monitor. Not exactly a great system at such a busy airport.