Help on landing and transit (Vancouver -> Toronto)

[artmesh]

Hi, I am a little confused on the landing and hope someone can advise.

I am a PNP Ontario applicant, have already received our COPR docs.
I am from a visa-exempt country, while my wife is not, so she has a one time visa given in her passport.

Issue now is we may have to take an international flight into Vancouver and take another domestic airline flight to Toronto. Since these are separate flights, we should need to exit customs even though we are in transit" and our landing will then be at Vancouver.

Since the PR cards are not issued immediately, for our domestic flight from Vancouver to Toronto (and reverse direction)
- Do I need to get an eTA or PRTD?
- Does my wife need to get another visa or PRTD?

Help appreciated! thanks

 

[Bs65]

Domestic flights do not require a PR card or a PRTD that is only for international flights into Canada. All you need for the connecting flight would be a boarding pass and your id/passport. You complete your landing formalities, pass through customs with your luggage and then drop luggage off at connections desk before heading for connecting flight gate.

You would complete your initial landing in Vancouver so allow at least 2/3 hours between flights in case , could possibly need less no way to predict and as a PNP applicant you might be asked to confirm to the officer doing your landing onward travel to Ontario.

Only if you leave Canada and want to come back before you have your PR cards will both of you need to get PRTDs being visa exempt is not relevant once you are a PR,neither is an ETA or TRV which PRs cannot have, the PR card or PRTD becomes the 'travel document' plus passport authorsing you to board a plane back to Canada.

 

[artmesh]

Domestic flights do not require a PR card or a PRTD that is only for international flights into Canada. All you need for the connecting flight would be a boarding pass and your id/passport. You complete your landing formalities, pass through customs with your luggage and then drop luggage off at connections desk before heading for connecting flight gate.

You would complete your initial landing in Vancouver so allow at least 2/3 hours between flights in case , could possibly need less no way to predict and as a PNP applicant you might be asked to confirm to the officer doing your landing onward travel to Ontario.

Only if you leave Canada and want to come back before you have your PR cards will both of you need to get PRTDs being visa exempt is not relevant once you are a PR,neither is an ETA or TRV which PRs cannot have, the PR card or PRTD becomes the 'travel document' plus passport authorsing you to board a plane back to Canada.

Thanks for the excellent reply

 

[Bs65]

Thanks for the excellent reply

See here as well a useful shared experience specific to landing as opposed to simply transiting as per my reply.

https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/first-time-pr-landing-at-vancouver-procedures-tips.543495/

 

[vensak]

Here is my prudent advice.
If you go for the formal landing in Vancouver, better count with bigger transit gap (4 hours at least). It can happen that there might be waiting queue there.
Another good advice is not get SIN number in Vancouver but in Ontario (it so happens that your SIN has encoded the province or the region where you got it, so for PNP it is better to have one from Ontario).
And other than that just be ready to show connection domestic flight ticket to Ontario. That's all

 

[anujoshi]

A friend of mine had the same thing - they were coming to Toronto with a stopover in Montreal. Since their international flight landed in Montreal (first point of entry into Canada) this is where they landed into the country. They completed all their formalities here, including immigration and customs. Allow yourself extra time for this (minimum 2-3 hours). My friend had a 1-hour stopover before his Toronto connection and I advised him early on to change that second leg due to this reason - it was helpful, as it took about 1.5 hrs to get their family of 3 through customs and immigration at Montreal. The Montreal-Toronto domestic flight didn't require immigration or customs - just the boarding pass and passport/or other Canadian ID (which you won't have) as mentioned above. Good luck!