Air Transat: The Passengers

Trudeau Airport Dept: At about 6:30 p.m. last Friday, the passengers on an Air Transat flight from Rome disembarked at Montreal's Trudeau airport and prepared themselves for what some believed would be the toughest part of their journey. After nine hours in the air, all of it in daylight, they prepared their jet-lagged bodies to enter the airport's international arrivals complex and pass through Canada Customs, an experience which at Trudeau can sometimes be compared to what would occur if the immigrant processing halls at Ellis Island met the gates of hell, according to Montreal Gazette. A Canadian Border Services Agency CBSA agent showed them how to slip their passports and declaration forms into the appropriate slots, press the buttons on the screen in answer to a series of questions about nationality and what was being declared, then collect the receipt the machines spat back. "Step this way, please." But instead of being shepherded into a zigzag maze of roped off waiting lines, where minutes can turn into hours before a customs officer asks them what they have to declare, the travellers were directed instead to a battery of automated kiosks that look like what happens when a desktop computer meets an ATM. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.