As you may have already heard through your Team Development Specialist, in an effort to improve student experience upon arrival and at departure, AFS-USA is instituting two new “mini-gateway” airports in Minneapolis (MSP) and Washington, D.C. (IAD) and moving the Houston gateway to Dallas (DFW).

The two new mini-gateways will significantly reduce the travel time for many students coming on program to the U.S., some of whose travel times are currently greater than 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the Dallas (DFW) gateway allows AFS-USA (and our partners) to use non-stop American Airlines flights for our hosted students because, starting in 2016, United Airlines instituted an Unaccompanied Minor (UCM) policy for all 15-year-olds which has made it impossible for some of our partners to use United for international flights and for AFS-USA to manage domestic bookings.

These new gateways will go live on November 1 in Global Link.

Teams directly affected by this change have already been contacted by their TDS to brief them on the changes, explain what to expect and ensure questions are answered. Of particular note, the students from NH17 will return through the gateway from whence they came.

The Area Teams directly affected by this change are:

• IAD Mini-Gateway – Baltimore AT, Capital AT, Virginia AT
• MSP Mini-Gateway – Chequamegon AT, East Metro AT, Grand Rapids AT, Greater West Metro AT,  Lake Superior AT, Minn-kota AT, North Central WI AT

Other Area Teams should not see significant impact from these changes. Please note that visibility of all hosted participants on MyAFS will not be impacted.

If you have any questions on this change, please speak with your TDS to find out further information. Starting in early December, we will be setting up travel/logistics meetings with key volunteers in each of these gateways.

Additional information regarding changes in application distribution and placement processes that are currently being planned for NH18 with input from across the organization, including the Hosting Advisory Group and Field Leadership team, will be shared with volunteers by December 1.

As always, we appreciate your openness to changes as we make improvements to our hosted students’ experiences.

Kind regards,

Hosting Operations, Travel & Logistics and Field Leadership Teams