Originally Posted by
TravellingChris
The reason that Heathrow management is so concerned about this requirement is that the airport has a huge transit business and there are plenty of alternatives--for example, for passengers traveling between North America and the Indian Subcontinent, there are lots of other options beside LHR (not to mention many direct flights), including DXB. By contrast geography means that there are far fewer alternatives to transit via the U.S. or Canada for certain itineraries, such as between the Far East and Latin America, or between certain parts of Europe and Latin America. So the disincentive factor of an ETA for transiting the U.S. or Canada is less of an issue than it would be for transiting the UK.
I know we’re still some time away from it but I haven’t seen anything suggesting ETIAS would be implemented for transiting passengers but I’d surprised if it didn’t apply to them. I wonder if it would assuage LHR’s fears if that’s the case.
One if the stats the CEO posted about was that there were 19,000 fewer passengers from Doha but he didn’t say whether those are Qatari nationals or not and the vast majority of traffic from DOH flights are likely not Qatari nationals. So that stat feels like it’s missing something.