Border Crossing Procedures

I made my first US border crossing yesterday. There is a lot of apprehension about all the things that need to be done to be legal. Here is a summary of what I did and it all went well. Side note, anybody flying near Washington DC (100 mile radius) should learn the Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) procedures and take the online test through faasafety.gov before going near.


BORDER CROSSING PROCEDURES

General:
- Have all aircraft documents on board (ins, reg, license, medical, journey log, c of a, canpass etc.)
- Have customs sticker (US) ? not a requirement but good to have
- Have Canpass registration completed - not a requirement but good to have
- Have Passport

Prior to flight:
- File eApis online for pilot and passengers
- File flightplan ? get transponder code
- Call US customs at arrival airport to let them know you are coming

Return flight:
- File flight plan to cross border ? get transponder code ? use auto open for the US flight plan or ask the ATC controllers to open it. Canadian flight plans are all auto open
- File eApis departure (need to know your last US point of departure)
- contact 1-888-CANPASS (alternate 613-659-4576) 2 to 48 hrs before returning to Canada ? if you have this service

Border crossing...

Thanks Andrew for sharing.
I`m also planning in a near future a trip crossing the border and I`ve started to read on the procedures. Your guidelines will certainly help.

Did you clear the custom at the nearest airport after crossing the border, or you flew up to destination ?
I was wondering if it`s better to clear custom as soon as crossing. My reasonning is that the airport along the border must have more experience dealing with GA traffic?

Any recommendation on where to stop (along the Ontario/Quebec border).

Michel Roy
RV-7a
25hrs completed...

qood question

Because you need to book a time with customs it would certainly be better to stop at an airport closer to the border. I used Syracuse NY. This also completes your border crossing requirements and you are now free to travel on the rest of your trip without a flight plan if you choose. It makes the scheduling much easier.

Border Crossing, Eh?

I did it for first time yesterday too. I hate the CBP website, shoot the entire comittee on that one. I just filed for coming back in to the US and I had to type my address in I think twelve times.

Hans

From Rosie: Hey Hans, I too entered my address a dozen times and found out why. I wrote it up here in this thread.

border

I agree that the CBP website is onerous... apparently they are trying to streamline but don't hold your breath.
To/from KOSH last week, we had no real problems. Canada Customs gave us a bit of grief on the phone in CYZR because we were about 45 minutes late. Interesting conversation though.
"Why were you late?"

"Partly because you made us hold on the phone for 10 minutes before we left our fuel stop, finally gave up trying to inform you of our revised arrival time."

"Yea, we had a busy weekend..."

Enough said.

register early

I do 4-8 crossings a year back and forth with Canada and up into Alaska etc, just flew back from AK in the C-185 a couple weeks ago.

The eApis system is new. Make sure you register for that early. Its a bit daunting but not too bad... allow a week or two to get all your passwords through OK, although back in May I was set in a day.

The downside is you have to file all that via a computer and know your exact day of crossing in advance, so for those of us that camp or do back country it can be a hassle. Frankly it pissed me off to have to file to LEAVE the country. Ugh!

Oh, if you tend to carry firearms, thats an issue in canada unless you have an explicit purpose (hunting tags, competition, survival/AK etc).

Re flight plans in canada, the trick is to just give yourself plenty of extra time and radio in amendments on the fly as needed. That allows a lot of flexibility if you are dealing with weather issues etc.

And for crossings, remember you have to deal with multiple entities that have nothing to do with each other....customs on each side, flight plans and squawk codes etc.

Tim