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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

The USA is a very common transit country for Europe-South America and Asia-South America. It's not uncommon for travel between Europe and New Zealand or the East coast of Australia either.

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I travel from NZ, these days I choose to go through HKG (and visit the Shenzhen markets, in China) to Europe.

My normal experience of entering China is always fast and courteous, entering the US is frankly scary every time, lots of questions about what you're going to do - I show the same business APEC card at both borders (unlike China it's not a visa for the US border, the US is not a full member of APEC, but it does get me in the crew line, and identifies me as a frequent business traveller)

You're not the only person I've heard say that they avoid the TPAC route because they want to avoid the USA. But I've heard people complain that as much as they'd prefer to avoid the USA the flight schedules are far more convenient.

Have you tried the ANZ AKL-YVR connecting to ACA YVR-Europe flights? Canada is far happier about transiting passengers than the USA is. (And if you've tried it and didn't like it, I'm curious why.)

I don't avoid the US if I need to go there, after all I lived there for 20 years, half my adult life, it's home as much as NZ (and I'm currently near the end of a NZ->US->HK->CN->HK->CN->HK->NZ trip) - getting in is the problem, the process is as I said elsewhere a bit scary, once you are there it's generally a nice place to be

I haven't tried Vancouver, maybe next time - I do prefer long flights that are overnight so to Europe that means with a daytime (or two) somewhere in the middle

AKL-YVR-LHR is an overnight (13 hours, 8PM-noon, same day) TPAC followed by an overnight (9.5 hours, 6PM-11:30AM, next day) TATL. So it certainly fits your preference for having long overnight flights.

Emirates has an AKL-DXB flight now that works pretty well.

I might be bias here cause I am Canadian. But I am far happier transiting through Canada whenever I need to go back to that side of the world.

The whole 360 body scan and the random questioning by US border control is simply terrifying. I have been asked to spell my name and say my birthday to see my reaction. It’s just an uncomfortable experience in general. I can’t even imagine what treatment middle easterner will get if even I get that treatment.

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