Bizarre and painful new passport restrictions in T5 for hand-baggage travellers
Sep 12, 2013, 6:09 am
#121
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: YYZ
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It can be done in YYZ if you are checking in there. I know you should stay passport consistent and use the same passport on arrival as in APIS (but I never have). If not, at Flight Connections they typically look at your passport now anyway. So no change there.
Sep 12, 2013, 8:19 am
#126
Join Date: Dec 2007
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As long as there are no queues for the machines then I'd call this irritating rather than painful but it does make a complete travesty of BA's investments in printing your own boarding pass at home and in mobile boarding passes - at least for outgoing flights from LHR.
Is the "to glide, to stride, to breeze" picture still on their facebook page? I couldn't see it. I was going to leave a moderately sarcastic comment.
JP
Is the "to glide, to stride, to breeze" picture still on their facebook page? I couldn't see it. I was going to leave a moderately sarcastic comment.
JP
Sep 12, 2013, 4:18 pm
#129
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 1,477
What happens if you transit through LHR on two separate tickets? I've done this several times.
e.g. LBA-LHR (booking #1)
then LHR-JFK (booking #2)
the "passport check" at the LBA gate isn't going to apply to the LHR-JFK booking. You arrive at T5 as domestic arrival and pass through conformance and go airside... or do you get pulled aside for an extra passport check at that conformance point?
...or do you get as far as the gate for the JFK flight before "the system" spots something is wrong?
"Can of worms" doesn't even begin to describe what's going on here...
e.g. LBA-LHR (booking #1)
then LHR-JFK (booking #2)
the "passport check" at the LBA gate isn't going to apply to the LHR-JFK booking. You arrive at T5 as domestic arrival and pass through conformance and go airside... or do you get pulled aside for an extra passport check at that conformance point?
...or do you get as far as the gate for the JFK flight before "the system" spots something is wrong?
"Can of worms" doesn't even begin to describe what's going on here...
Sep 12, 2013, 4:19 pm
#130
Join Date: Dec 2012
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It can be done in YYZ if you are checking in there. I know you should stay passport consistent and use the same passport on arrival as in APIS (but I never have). If not, at Flight Connections they typically look at your passport now anyway. So no change there. The only people affected by this are short haul customers starting their journeys at LHR landside and not checking luggage. And I don't think this wheeze will last for very long, thanks to App users mainly. They tried something similar at LGW, signs everywhere, and it didn't survive the first week.
Sep 12, 2013, 4:27 pm
#131
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I really think these new visa rules are a red herring.
The self service check-in machines can't check visas, they can just check machine readable passports. They also can't check that the person presenting the passport matches the photograph on the passport.
Like I said earlier, if someone dropped their passport and home printed boarding pass on the tube I could still use this to get airside after authorising my passport at one of the machines.
If it was only for visa users then they'd not say you could perform this check at a machine
So one question is will these machines prompt those that require visas to then go to the visa desk?
The self service check-in machines can't check visas, they can just check machine readable passports. They also can't check that the person presenting the passport matches the photograph on the passport.
Like I said earlier, if someone dropped their passport and home printed boarding pass on the tube I could still use this to get airside after authorising my passport at one of the machines.
If it was only for visa users then they'd not say you could perform this check at a machine
So one question is will these machines prompt those that require visas to then go to the visa desk?
If it is just checking the "valid for 3months beyond stay", the machines can definitely read the passport expiry date.
Sep 12, 2013, 10:22 pm
#132
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: not far from MUC
Posts: 6,620
This has happened since T5 opened as "Passport and Visa check" has always been required for long haul flights. You would fail conformance if your documents hadn't been verified and sent to Domestic Flight Connections Customer Service for this to be resolved. International - long haul would be done by the Ready to Fly agent.
What exactly does this check comprise of? That I actually have a passport? Is the passport scanned or swiped, or is it merely a "tick here if passenger has his passport [ ]"?
I think this change begs two questions:
1. If all pax have already had their passports checked, why maintain a full passport check at the gate?
2. If a full passport check at the gate is still maintained for all pax, why is there a need to check passports before that?
EDIT: ....or perhaps this is a secret plan funded by other hub airports to made LHR look even less attractive?
Last edited by shorthauldad; Sep 12, 2013 at 10:37 pm Reason: clarity
Sep 13, 2013, 1:06 am
#134
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Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B329 Safari/8536.25)
So, what damage can an undocumented person do airside, but before they get on a plane? Something's happened to provoke this.
So, what damage can an undocumented person do airside, but before they get on a plane? Something's happened to provoke this.
This all does seem a bit bonkers, but for once things seem to work better for those of us not originating in London 
We'll board on our domestic ticket at the outstation and then be airside in T5 when we land so no chance to go to a machine and get a flimsy. I must say though that on my last flight (EDI-LHR-MAD), the EDI lounge ladies quickly checked my passport upon lounge entry (as they could see the linked sector) so pretty painless.
We'll board on our domestic ticket at the outstation and then be airside in T5 when we land so no chance to go to a machine and get a flimsy. I must say though that on my last flight (EDI-LHR-MAD), the EDI lounge ladies quickly checked my passport upon lounge entry (as they could see the linked sector) so pretty painless.I have to say I think this policy is absolutely bonkers and yet again proves BA's incompetence with words in describing this as speeding the journey through the airport, as you now have to be 10 minutes earlier with hand baggage only and take extra steps on the way.
Sep 13, 2013, 1:51 am
#135
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: LHR
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Posts: 450
Semi-related question (apologies if this is too off-topic...seems appropriate to me): With a USA passport, I've flown long haul from T5 with hand baggage only, but didn't print my boarding pass beforehand. I went to the Club check-in and had my boarding pass printed. I proceeded to conformance, failed, and was told that I need to go to the visa/passport check.
Did I just have less competent check-in agent that didn't clear me for conformance in some way, or do you actually have to go to the visa/passport check desk no matter what?
This seems like it will be particularly annoying for those with status since we won't have a separate visa/passport check desk with a (hopefully) shorter line?
Did I just have less competent check-in agent that didn't clear me for conformance in some way, or do you actually have to go to the visa/passport check desk no matter what?
This seems like it will be particularly annoying for those with status since we won't have a separate visa/passport check desk with a (hopefully) shorter line?