ETIHAD’S US FLIGHT PRE-CLEARANCE SET TO EXPAND FOR US BOUND PASSENGERS
(Posted 13th January 2015)
The trial runs started in January 2014, to clear US bound passengers of Etihad on certain flights already in Abu Dhabi, sparing them the often massive queues on arrival in the United States, have proved successful and come 15th of January will the service be expanded, it was learned overnight from Abu Dhabi.
The US Customs and Border service now operates a new facility at Abu Dhabi International Airport’s Terminal 3 from where at the moment passengers on flights EY 101, 131 and 151 are processed and cleared, or not, before taking off to New York, Washington and Chicago respectively.
From mid-January onwards will flight EY 103 to New York and flight EY 183 to San Francisco also be added to the processing, giving all Etihad passengers destined for US destinations pre-clearance.
This applies for passengers boarding in Abu Dhabi as well as for connecting passengers from across the Etihad network, which will be welcome news for travelers from Nairobi, the only city Etihad presently flies to in East Africa. All flights from Nairobi are code-shared with Kenya Airways. Come May though will Entebbe be added to the growing Africa network with daily flights before late this year Dar es Salaam will come on line in December.
Abu Dhabi is one of presently 15 airports in 6 countries where the US has embedded immigration, customs and security checks prior to taking off to the United States and when passengers arrive they are then treated as if they had arrived from a US domestic flight, greatly cutting down on the time needed to actually get through these often extensive procedures.
According to Etihad sources have over 325.000 passengers over the past 12 months benefited from this facility, in the process pulling in more passengers who on other airlines would be subjected to arrival queues.
Two travel agents in Kampala have in communications overnight professed not to be aware of this added benefit for their clients, should they from May onwards opt to fly with Etihad via Abu Dhabi and final destination either New York, Washington, Chicago or San Francisco.
