P
Portlander
Guest
Great point and I'm not sure. I thought agents were summoned from the Custom House downtown during previous years to clear flights originating from Canada or maybe that was for the occasional charter demand.
I believe the brief period that Air Canada ran direct flights to Toronto leveraged the preclearance there. But you are also correct that, in the event of an international arrival via charter or emergency landing, Customs and Immigration are called in from downtown. (Years ago, my mother worked for the answering service that had the line for INS after-hours, and this was not a super-rare occurrence.)Great point and I'm not sure. I thought agents were summoned from the Custom House downtown during previous years to clear flights originating from Canada or maybe that was for the occasional charter demand.
So, they're building what you suggested!Other than the "vision" of extending the actual terminal in the master plan, there are no plans of actually making it happen in the near future. What PWM is doing is kind of a temporary fix by constructing a narrow elevated passenger concourse that will connect to the west end of the building and will support the two new jetways at Gates 12 & 13. My contention with this plan is that the current passenger holding area (by Linda Bean's) is already crowded during the morning push and when you add two more physical gates to the mix seating will be inadequate. My suggestion was to extend the upper portion of the concourse to match the existing lower footprint that is already in place. This would be relatively inexpensive and double the size of the seating area and would ease congestion until the entire terminal is hopefully extended to the west down the road. This photo shows the area that could be enlarged (orange ladder) by knocking out the glass and building on top of the roof of the bottom level.
.View attachment 42686
Now it's time to turn your influence towards that horrible carpet in the eastern side of the terminal!Phase 9 will be a new cross taxiway, only one is needed in that area and it will be a little wider. They are building what I've whined about for the last 2 years and my job is to plant the seed while adding a dose of skillful influence without being too annoying. Am thankful there was just enough money left over out of the $10.4 Million grant to make the vision a reality!