ESTA Panic
 

Thought i'd share a story from today.

Tomorrow, the wife and i are travelling to New York on BA0173 in J. Booked 2 months ago, and ESTA submitted beginning of December.

During check-in for the BA flights, I noticed it would not allow me to print off wife's boarding pass. BA also advised that our travel documents would need to be checked at the airport. The only document i could think of was our ESTA/ approval so I re-checked the ESTA approval and to my absolute horror, noticed her middle name had a one letter mis-spelling "M" instead of "N". Quick search on FT indicated that as this did not match up on the passport, it's as good as useless. NOTE: I scanned her passport to pre-populate the fields and this seems to have caused the issue (however I know it's my fault for not checking)

PANIC!!

11:35 today I resubmitted her ESTA, but in bold red highlight, 72 hours minimum. Body shaking of nerves, I make silly mistakes but correct them immediately and resubmit the application. It prompts me that I have an existing ESTA open that will be cancelled if resubmitting. Pausing for a second, I question whether I should do it, but knowing how precise US customs can be, I thought its the only option available.
11:45 I call BA Bronze Helpline to discuss my predicament. The guy i spoke to was extremely helpful and understanding and gave me some options to consider, and a number to call should I need to change flights.
12:00 Go for lunch with a friend but can't stop thinking about this ridiculous mistake i made and crossing fingers we get approval in time.
13:00 Get back from lunch, check status, all approved!!

PANIC OVER! Well kind of. I'm now paranoid i've made another mistake somewhere, or that BA won't process it in time for our flight, or US customs won't receive it in time for our arrival.

I'm sure it's all fine but the lesson from this story? Be wary of the passport image scanner on ESTA site. Recommend filling in all fields yourself!

Thanks for posting this, there have been a few discussions recently around the '72 minimum' specified on the US site, it's good to know that in an emergency, all may not be lost.

Enjoy the trip, I forgot to do my Australian ETA until I was actually at the airport, total panic but it was all fine after a 30 min wait for confirmation. A couple of big whiskeys and you'll be fine!

It would almost certainly have worked if the API was submitted without the middle name. If the passport information was otherwise correct then it should have passed the CBP check. It's more important to get the passport number and expiry date correct than the name, given all the various alphabets that there are in the world - transliteration is never perfect. However I can see the point in paying a modest sum to get peace of mind.

Last year I had a similar problem, and ended up with no ESTA at T-24hrs - thankfully managed to get it sorted, but it was a timely lesson in how not to forget it in future!

I sympathise! For my November trip, I realised that I totally forgot to do my new ESTA since I had to get a new passport as the old was full. A lot of panic for a short period then thankfully all got approved on time. Mind you, queue at LAX immigration as I got the "cross" typical of new passports, was over 2 hours!

This is my experience too. I forgot to apply for a new ESTA after renewing my passport which led to an uncomfortable few minutes on my blackberry at the check in counter while my wife glared at me.

I had the standard 72 hour warning message but it was only a couple of minutes before I could be checked in.

I remembered I didn’t have an esta on the way to the airport once. Pulled into South Mimms services, filled it in on my iPad and drove on. Didn’t bother checking again, and checked in with VS with no issues at all.

Before I lived here in the US but used to travel a fair bit back and forward, I've actually applied for the ESTA while waiting to check in at T5

A quick question (possibly a little off topic): I'm travelling from LHR to JFK in the New Year and have just renewed my passport and my ESTA. Will I be able to use the returning ESTA lane?

It's quite hard to find an official answer on this but it looks like as long as you currently have an ESTA and have visited the US on an ESTA some time before (since 2008) you can use the APC terminals. I had assumed that you needed to have visited on *this* ESTA but that seems not to have been the case. No mention has been made of passport renewal voiding this ability although it does void your ESTA.

I renewed my ESTA in May last year, using the same passport as my previous one, then visited the USA (entry point was PHL) in June and was able to successfully use the APC terminal.