Item — HN Reader

> The staff (CBP Officers) at these foreign-based Pre-clearance facilities are U.S. citizens who earn a premium for being stationed overseas and they earn a pretty penny for their duties. Usually the host country and the respective airport pays for the operation of such a station.

I’d like to know a bit more about the cost involved and who will end up paying for all this. I can imagine this to be a financial and logistical challenge at Taoyuan International Airport where there are currently two very old Terminals, one from which China Airlines and their SkyTeam partners such as Delta operate. Then another one for EVA Air and Star Alliance.

Both terminals are definitely coming into their years but not only that, having a pre-clearance facility there means that all airlines should use it in order to make it worthwhile.

This means the airport needs to designate one part of the terminal (or build a new one) for U.S. departures which is sealed off past the U.S. Immigration checkpoint.

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I expect the additional cost of salaries of US CBP officers in Taiwan is negligible in the larger scheme of things. I imagine this is part of a bigger plan to do more pre-clearance globally.

One advantage of doing pre-clearance is that aircraft can go from Taiwan directly to other airports, bypassing overloaded airports like LAX. In a post-COVID world, they can also avoid having people arrive sick. The Asian countries have done much better with Covid, and keeping them separate would be a win.

There is probably also more customs pre-clearance of freight going on, and a lot of air freight goes via passenger aircraft.

Not just other airports, but you’ll land at the domestic terminal of LAX etc., pick up your luggage and walk out or transfer in-terminal if you have an onward domestic flight without rescreening/rechecking.

Does pre-clearance apply / give benefits to freight-only flights?

Very good question - as TSMC ramps of for 5nm production (for both phones and laptops) this could seemingly be more and more vital (especially if any assembly is done in the US because of chip sanctions on China).

Not in practice, but it can in theory. The US-Canada agreement allows for this.

> This means the airport needs to designate one part of the terminal (or build a new one) for U.S. departures which is sealed off past the U.S. Immigration checkpoint.

All Canadian international airports are set up this way, and frankly it sucks. The worst part is you need to budget quite a lot of extra travel time before your flight since you need to clear customs before boarding the plane. Less terrible but still annoying, since there's a separate terminal just for US departures, if your party is going to different (US & non-US destinations) you have to split up.

Not all, but most of the big ones anyway.

It’s basically built for Nexus cardholders.

But awfully nice to land as a domestic flight. Would rather deal with CBP officers in Toronto than those based at US airports constantly on high-alert because they deal with people from ???.

Designating a set of gates for US flights is how Canada does it. Any airline can use those gates, but all US flights must originate from there.

You just go through immigration/customs in Canada (it looks very similar to those in the US). Then once you land they treat it like a domestic flight - so it allows airlines to fly to more airports (not all US airports have customs) and relieve some congestion at customs itself.

> This means the airport needs to designate one part of the terminal (or build a new one) for U.S. departures which is sealed off past the U.S. Immigration checkpoint.

One annoying side effect of this is that you can’t bring most foods onto the gate/flight because you’re technically in the US now. But it’s somehow ok to have local fast food places inside the terminal.