Had an interesting flying adventure in my RV-6A C-GEOY this past Friday & Saturday. Friend Bill Beaton sold his Lancair and had to deliver it to Boise ID. As Canada has strict Covid travel restrictions with quarantine periods, we looked into the Air Crew exemptions if I chased him down there and brought him back. With a few hours research and assurances from Kelowna BC customs agents, we put it together. So Friday first leg was a 3.5hr, 490 nautical flight down to Boise (Bill the show off did it in 2.4hrs). One hour in Boise for customs, fuel & plane transfer, than the 2 of us were off in the 6A up to Kelowna, 3.1hrs, 405 nautical & head winds. With all our pre-prep work, the Canadian Customs process went smoothly with Flight Crew exempt status and the new Covid reporting processes done. Unfortunately we finished up a bit too late to head it back to Calgary that late afternoon, if we did, we would have been over the Canadian Rockies at legal night (been there, done that, definitely won’t do it again…!) so we got a room, steaks & a couple wine’s, many flying stories to finish a perfect day. Saturday morning flight back to Calgary was spectacular, another 2hr and 260 nautical of leasurely flying.
The real notable thing about our flights is that it showed it is possible for Canadians to do cross border flights in our planes, even in these Covid days, with the appropriate research done. You might ask why we cleared in Kelowna, two reasons- big CYYC landing fees, and it was suggested to us that the exempt status decision was very much up the individual customs agent, we thought we had better odds in Kelowna.