Greetings and Happy New Year. The New Year has me flying to Calgary for work again. The current temperature there is a balmy five degrees Fahrenheit.

Just a quick post today with a travel tip for the readers who travel internationally: Always have an extra customs declaration form in your bag.

My flight today has run out of customs declaration forms, so I’ll need to search for one when I land in Calgary. Since these are generally handed out on flights, I’m not quite sure where to find them when I get to the airport. The flight crew said that they were calling ahead so that some would be brought to the plane. If I had been prepared with an extra declaration form, I would be picking up my luggage in the arrivals hall while everyone else was still filling their forms out.

Even if you are enrolled in a program like Global Entry or Nexus, it can make sense to have an extra form handy. On my last flight home in 2014, I discovered that the line for Global Entry was longer than the standard immigration line line (most of the Global Entry kiosks in the Calgary airport were broken). I decided I would hop into the normal immigration line, but couldn’t because all of the customs declaration forms were out in the lobby.