Canada eTA FAQ & Tips

Most visitors can stay in Canada up to six months, but your eTA doesn’t decide that. The border services officer on arrival does, and may allow a shorter or longer stay. If they set a date, they mark it in your passport. Check it before you leave the desk. The eTA is a permission to fly, not a length of stay An eTA is valid for up to five years or until your passport expires. That is how long the document lasts, not how long you can stay. In that period you can make as many trips as you like, and each trip has its own limit. ...

If you’ve lost your eTA number, you almost certainly still have it: it’s in the approval email IRCC sent you. Search your inbox and spam folder for that email first. You also don’t need the number to board a plane. At check-in the airline scans your passport and finds your eTA electronically, so a deleted email doesn’t put your trip at risk on its own. Where to find the email Search your whole mailbox, not just the inbox. Look in “All Mail” or “Archive” and search for eTA, Electronic Travel Authorization or IRCC. IRCC’s emails often have similar subjects, so open each one. Check spam and junk. Canada.ca itself advises this, because filters sometimes catch the message. Check other addresses. Did you apply from a work address, an old address or a family member’s mailbox? The email went to whatever address was on the form. Look for a screenshot or a PDF from the time you applied. The approval email contains your eTA number. Save it this time. Not sure the email was ever sent? ...

An eTA (Electronic Travel Authorization) is an entry requirement for visa-exempt travellers who fly to Canada or transit through a Canadian airport. You don’t receive a paper document: the eTA is linked electronically to your passport. It is valid for up to five years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. If you already have a valid Canadian visa, you don’t need an eTA. The eTA is issued by the Government of Canada, through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The government’s official website is Canada.ca. ...

A US visa does not let you into Canada, but for citizens of some countries it replaces the Canadian visa: if you hold a valid US non-immigrant visa, you may be able to fly to Canada on an eTA. That only works for a short list of nationalities, only by air, and only if the US visa is valid on the day you apply. For everyone else, the US visa changes nothing. The answer depends on your passport, so start by finding your row. ...

You can apply for a Canada eTA the night before a flight, or on your phone in the airport, but nobody can promise you an answer before boarding. The application is online only, there is no eTA counter at the airport that issues one, and the airline checks for an approved eTA before it lets you on the plane. Most applications are decided within minutes; the ones that are not can take days. So the real question is not “may I apply late” but “what happens if my application is one of the slow ones”. ...

A Canada eTA that is still “pending” after 72 hours has most likely been sent to a person for a closer look. It is not a refusal, and it is not lost. Most applications are decided automatically within minutes; the ones that are not wait in a different queue, and we know of no fixed finish line for it. The number 72 comes from the government’s own wording about the email with next steps (canada.ca says to expect that email within 72 hours when more is needed), but it is not a deadline for the decision, so passing it does not mean something has gone wrong. ...

You have the approval email. The Air Canada app — or any other airline’s online check-in — says it cannot verify your travel authorization and tells you to see an agent. In almost every case we see, the eTA exists but is linked to different passport data from what the airline is looking at: a different passport number, a different spelling of the name, or a passport that has since been replaced. The eTA is not stored in the booking; it is stored against a passport number on the Canadian government’s side, and the airline simply asks that system “does this passport have a valid eTA?” If the answer is no, the app has nothing to show you. ...

The name boxes are the second most common place an eTA application goes wrong, right after the passport number. The rule itself is short: enter all of your names exactly as they appear on your passport — every given name in the “first name” box, the full surname in the “last name” box, in the order shown in the machine-readable zone. That is what the official IRCC help guide for the eTA form says, and it is what the airline’s passport scan is compared against at check-in. Below is what that rule means for middle names, double surnames, hyphens, accents, and passports that carry only one name. ...

Yes. A Canada eTA is multiple entry. Once approved, it is valid for up to five years or until the passport it is linked to expires — whichever comes first — and during that time you can fly to Canada as many times as you want. There is no trip counter, no per-visit re-application and no “activation”. That is the official position on canada.ca: “With a valid eTA, you can travel to Canada as often as you want for short stays (normally for up to six months at a time).” ...

All of them arrive with the same subject line and from the same no-reply government address, so the subject tells you nothing. The only thing that tells you what happened is the line at the top of the message body that begins Status :. Read that line first, every time. None of them replaces a check of your own: what the government’s systems say about your authorisation today is on the status page, and how to read every row of that page is a separate matter. ...