bd95

DUB has a similar philosophy for CTA arrivals. All funnelled through normal immigration, and though no passport is required you do have to be able to prove residence of the CTA.

bd95

And in Belfast the other day, my domestic flight was met in the baggage hall by a combination of UKBF, Customs and Dept of Agriculture!

paulwelch101

The odd thing is that I know my passport number, I quote it often enough! They cannot see a photo of you on their database so cannot confirm your identity through those means! You would think that it wouldn't be rocket science to sort of a database like that!

paulwelch101

"I must admit, I don't think I'd be able to keep my cool if I'd followed the signs correctly and was being refused entry to the country I didn't know I'd left!"

Thanks, I might consider dropping an e-mail to Simon Calder - it's clearly some sort of bad joke, and to think that it's still happening!

By the time the flight was boarding, I almost couldn't keep my cool. I was due into work the next morning and I knew my boss would be less than impressed! Although with this sort of story, he'd know that I couldn't have made it up!

paulwelch101

Once back at T1, I almost considered this! I'd flown in from Belfast not Beirut so I was getting annoyed and very tired and wondered what could they do if anything if I just walked through. I'm sure I'd be arrested, but I don't know that they could charge me with?

mad_rich

Exactly. "Not following the directions of a UKBA Officer* who has no jurisdiction over your situation" is not an offence. I wonder what the offence would be...


* Are the Officers? Or agents, or something else?

Enigma368

Not that I doubt for a second that the inspector was a jobsworth, he is theoretically right that this could be used as a way to breach the UK border illegally.

e.g. Say you live in some country where it is not easy to get a VISA to visit UK. You could book a flight from BHD to LHR, print boarding pass for this flight you have no intention to take. You then fly from your home country to LHR T1, follow flight connections to T5 and claim at T5 border that you simply flew in from BHD and show your printed boarding pass as proof! Of course you would have to be pretty convincing to get away with this and still have a pretty decent fake UK driver license or other ID but it is possible.

There is however a far easier way to breach UK border illegally at Gatwick, where people flying from the Rep of Ireland can bypass the border by showing their boarding pass, which the staff at Gatwick could never know was really used or just printed at home in some far off country before the person flew to Gatwick.

shorthauldad

Errr ... what?!

So if you arrive at LGW on a flight from, say, the Schengen area, and you are connecting to, say, MAN (or JER, or ...) you have to exit airside (as if you were going to collect bags and end your journey there?) then immediately turn round and go back through check-in and security as if you were taking your first flight of the day?

mad_rich

A separate Flight Connections for Domestic arrivals, to clarify.

Regardless of where you're going to, if you have arrived off a domestic flight and your connection is within T5, you get spat out into the terminal without interference from UKBA or security.

However, domestic > domestic is still sufficiently rare that you might have to remind the agent at the BP check to take a photograph, just like INT>DOM connections or domestic pax originating at T5 would. If they don't, you may well have the same problem, and be indistinguishable from international pax as far as UKBA are concerned.

shorthauldad

Why is there no means to verify if a BP was actually used? BA can do it for the very mundane reason to avoid crediting Avios for flights you don't actually use, why can't UKBA get access to the same info?

Enigma368

I'm sure it is technically possible but it would prob be difficult and expensive to implement. I can say from doing it many times that at Gatwick, when arriving from Rep. of Ireland in South Terminal, you bypass border and passport checks by handing your boarding pass to staff member. This boarding pass for a Ryanair flight is little more that a bit of torn A4 paper and the staff member rarely even looks at it.

christianharris

Why is it that at MAN, for example, they don't take your photo whereas as LHR and LGW they do? Always wondered this!

paulwuk

If there were, simply get an accomplice to fly BHD-LHR for real, print 2 boarding passes. Accomplice exits Heathrow after the flight lands.

Breach of the peace?

corporate-wage-slave

Because, without spelling out all the details, there is a risk of illegal immigration at LHR T1 / T5 and LGW, which there isn't at Manchester, due to their different Flight Connections procedures. (I know, there are other loopholes, but I guess we best not encourage it).

shorthauldad

FWIW, I'm not a big fan of security through obscurity... I think we can assume that by the time anything such as this gets posted (or even alluded to) here, those who actually might want to exploit it have been aware of it for a very, very long time.