It’s largely painfully unaware privileged western travelers without a hint about their passport privilege and complaining “as a matter of principle” despite these processes taking almost no time or effort yet acting outraged in a way where you’d think they’re being forced to apply for a visa needing to gather a zillion documents and go to an embassy or application support center in person only to be granted a single-entry visa that’s the length of stated trip or something. They’ll soon get used to it though and as far as I know the only pain of the ETA application thus far is that the app can be bad at reading the biometric chip but even that is still preferable to needing to do all the visa work plus grilling.

The bosses at LHR have been complaining again about it though I’m sure once ETIAS rolls around it’ll very likely be necessary just to transit through other hubs such as FRA, AMS, CDG, etc all the same as the other ETA programs so it’s not like LHR will be singled out unless ETIAS is announced to be unnecessary for transit. Even then the idea that people will be put off from transiting at LHR because of the ETA is another marker of privilege since they can’t be bothered to do this quick application or maybe even learn about its existence.