Apps To Make Airport Customs Easier

TTT 27 - Apps
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Jenn: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug Podcast.

Meggan: Hey, y'all

Jenn: So I wanna talk about something that I did on my trip recently. So I was recently in Florida, as you know, if you listened to the last episode I booked a flight with a very tight connection. Which I know we say not to do,

Meggan: We're not into following our own advice around these parts.

Jenn: Here's, here's the thing. I had never had to run for a flight before, and now that I've done it, I don't wish to do it again.

Meggan: I have done it as well and not again. No.

Jenn: No. So immediately after I booked the flight, I knew it was gonna be a tight connection. I start looking for ways to make this process go more smoothly. I applied for NEXUS which is a trusted traveler program between Canada, the US, and also Mexico. Unfortunately, I was not approved. In time. I'm still not approved, which is weird because my friend applied for it on the same day as me, and she got approved five days later, but I don't know

Meggan: really?

Jenn: Yeah!

Meggan: I, I thought they had closed all their offices in Canada. I thought that was the problem.

Jenn: She, she's approved, but she has to do the interview.

Meggan: Okay.

Jenn: I'm not yet approved, so I don't

Meggan: You're very suspicious looking!

Jenn: Apparently. I'm still waiting. I'm hopeful that we'll get it soon anyway, that this is not about Nexus.

Meggan: Right, Right, right.

Jenn: Nexus would've enabled us to use

Meggan: Sure.

Jenn: a shorter uh, security line, and you don't have to take off your shoes, and you don't have to take out your liquids. and it's just better. Anyway, what I did find is there is an app that you can use when you're going from Canada to the US to help speed up the customs process.

Meggan: Hmm.

Jenn: So the app is called Mobile Passport Control. So basically you go in, you put in your passport information, your flight details, the like mode of entry. You can select cruise ship or a plane, it's not for driving. And then you put like where you'll be staying and that sort of thing. And then when you get to the airport, you have to take a photo of yourself, and then it goes through the app and you get like a screen that you show them.

So at the airport, you basically go right to a customs officer and instead of using a kiosk, so this takes the. It only works in certain airports. So in Canada it only works in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. So at Toronto, Pearson, I should say not Toronto City. So unfortunately not in Halifax, but hopefully eventually they'll expand this.

I think it did help us a bit. But if you listen to our trip report last week, we did almost miss our flight because of a long customs line. So we couldn't get to the front to show someone that we had already felt

Meggan: right

Jenn: in order to to use this properly. So I, I think it kind of helped. But maybe not, I don't know.

So on the way home we flew through Montreal again with another hour layover. And then before leaving Orlando, we used the Arrive Can app, which I know it's not mandatory anymore, but you can still use it to speed up the customs process. So we arrived in Montreal at the customs entrance. I think they, they scan boarding pass, I'm pretty sure not my passport anyway. It determined if you had to go to a kiosk or not.

Meggan: Okay.

Jenn: We, we did have to go to a kiosk. But I think it's because the arrive can app, you can't, you don't take a photo of yourself. Because when I got to the kiosk, it had like saved my answers from the Arrive Can app. So it was like, Do you want to review your answers? And I said, No. It took the picture of me, it printed out the thing. And then I took that to the agent. I again, it saved me a little bit of time clicking No, no, no, no, no kind thing. We still had to run, We barely made our flight.

Uh, I think the apps helped a little bit. They helped me feel better, like I was taking some control over the situation. ,

Meggan: I mean, whatever works.

Jenn: Oh my gosh. I know. But I mean, anywhere you travel, you can look into these apps. I think that. We are getting more digital. I know that the Orlando airport and probably other airports at this point if you're flying on certain airlines, they have a way for you to book a time to go through security instead of waiting at a line.

Meggan: Oh,

Jenn: I know it wasn't an option for us flying on Air Canada, but there's all kinds of things out there that are new and trying to make the process a little bit easier. That's it. Have you heard of these apps at all Meggan ?

Meggan: No. And I also believe that the Canadian government could probably do a little bit better of a job telling people that yes. you don't need to use Arrive can to do with a pandemic, but these are the benefits of using it. I don't think that that's been explained to the Canadian public because really as soon as I didn't have to use Arrive can, I'm like, Sweet, never wanna see that app again. But that's because of the pandemic.

But if it's going to benefit me in other ways, I mean, and maybe the information's out there, but they're certainly not advertising that we've spent money on this app and you can still use it cuz it'll help you in these situations. I think that would be super helpful. Yeah. So hopefully you sharing this information will have other people use it, at least if nothing else, to speed up customs cuz who wouldn't wanna do that?

Jenn: I know, and I, I didn't know about it either until we were actually waiting for the bus to take us from our Disney resort to the airport. And someone who actually was gonna be on our flight he's from Montreal, and he said, Did you do a arrive can? I was like, Oh, you don't have to do that anymore. And he was like, Yeah, but it speeds up customs. I was like, oh, right, ok, we're doing arrive can!

So I did it and yeah, I think that I hadn't heard of it at all either. And yeah, they did spend a lot of money, I'm sure, developing this app. Yeah. Use it. It doesn't ask for any vaccine related information at all anymore. It's just the customs thing. Same as you would do on the kiosk, or you know, when you used to fill out the paper form on the plane.

Meggan: Right. I just think that this makes like, I mean, I think that's a good direction to go with it. I hope it, I hope that becomes more wildly, widely known and I will use it for that.

Jenn: Yeah. For sure. Perfect.

Meggan: Thanks for sharing, Jenn.

Jenn: Oh, thank you. That's all we have for this week. You can find us on our website, travel mug podcast.com, Social media at Travel Mug podcasts, and let us know if you have any tricks for going through the airport, cuz there could be things that we haven't heard of yet.

Meggan: Of course.

Jenn: And we would love it if you would support the show on buy me a Coffee similar to Patreon. Fun perks, like bloopers and that sort of stuff. You can also support the show by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or sharing the show with a travel loving pal. We all need more travel loving pals, so

Meggan: we do.

Jenn: We'll chat with you again soon. Bye everyone.

Meggan: Bye.