Canada’s visa-free transit program for Chinese nationals (China Transit Program) comes with many restrictions, and one of them is that you must transit through a designated airport. For a long time, only YVR (Vancouver International Airport) and YYZ (Toronto Pearson International Airport) participated in this program. But today (November 2), Canada suddenly added YYC (Calgary International Airport) to the list, allowing Chinese citizens to transit visa-free via YYC as long as they meet the other requirements.

Calgary International Airport (YYC)
Calgary International Airport (YYC)

What new visa-free transit itineraries are possible?

Since Calgary Airport’s only Asia route is Hainan Airlines’ YYC-PEK service, and unfortunately Hainan Airlines is not a designated CTP carrier, you still cannot fly PEK-YYC-SEA on Hainan Airlines without a Canadian visa. However, both Air Canada (AC) and WestJet (WS) operate quite a few flights from the U.S. to YYC. You can take flights on either of these airlines, transit via YYC from the U.S., and continue to anywhere in the world on the same day without needing a Canadian visa. That said, we still recommend reviewing the other eligibility requirements for the CTP visa-free transit program. We hope Canada will add Hainan Airlines to the list of approved visa-free transit carriers soon, which would significantly improve the competitiveness of this flight (for example, by enabling connections on Alaska Airlines to Seattle). Would you transit via YYC? Share your thoughts in the comments.