My USA trip 2024 (part 1)

[Devil's Advocate]

I guess the reason larger airports like Heathrow don't do this is the amount of resources it would consume, given the finite space and how busy they are already.

Heathrow is half airport and half shopping mall with limited room for expansion. They make it pretty clear they want everyone to stay in the shopping section as long as possible and only advance toward the gate when more shopping would risk delaying the flight. That is the opposite of what Preclearance would do for them and they already have all the traffick they can handle (and then some).

I tend to dislike long flights in coach class

Same here. My longest nonstop was 16.5 hours but that isn't even top ten these days. Qantas is planning nonstop flights around 20 hours by 2026. I prefer to separate ocean crossings into multiple shorter flights but the market seems to be moving away from that.

Link: https://www.afar.com/magazine/longest-flights-in-the-world

To the unitiated and uninformed, this would to them be a very reasonable question. And an opportunity to educate.

If a border official is playing dumb or passive aggressive it's probably not because they want to be educated on their own country. Say anything that triggers them and your trip is over, possibly without recourse. This goes double for Canadian border agents.

 

[Bob Dylan]

The closer you can get to the Earth the better the trip. In '74 I hitchhiked from Vancouver, B.C. to
Prince Edward Island. I would not trade that experience for any or all flights across the continent.

That's a Looooong trip, even on a Plane,Train or Bus!

I did a similar trip from San Diego to NYC back in the 60s, and it's still one of the Good Travel Memories I have!