Using UK & EU passports after Brexit
 

Hello.

I have read a lot of conflicting information about using two passports (a UK and an EU one) when flying after Brexit on BA.

I am reconciled at some stage to getting things wrong. I also appreciate I won’t be the only one using two passports for the first time shortly, and fully acknowledge how lucky I am to have the option. But does this sound right to people who have had to do this kind of thing before?

1) I book my flight from the UK to the EU.
2) Because I am flying to the EU, I change the info in my BA account from my UK passport to my EU passport.
3) I check in and present BA staff at the gate with my EU passport.
4) I land in the EU, showing my EU passport and go about my business.
5) Before I travel back to the UK, I change the info in my BA account from my EU passport to my UK one.
6) Show border agents from the EU country my EU passport.
7) Show BA staff at the gate my UK passport.
8) Land in the UK and show my UK passport at the border.

Is this the right order? Does it matter when I change the info in my BA account for the purposes of ensuring the right border force have the right API?

Thanks for any help!

We don't know the details yet and we will have to wait a little longer to know for certain. However if the UK becomes fully Third Country on 29 March then the worst case scenario is that there is a 90 days maximum visit per rolling 180 days. So if you are not spending that amount of time in the EU (excluding Ireland and transit to Sovereign Bases) then you can stick to your UK passport through out. If you are spending more than 90 days in EU+EEA per 180 days then the procedure you give is correct.

For the best part of 20 years, I've been managing travel for someone who is required to travel on two passports on some trips. The first and most important rule is: don't stress. If you remember to change the API to match the passport you will be using for each flight, that's good. If you forget, the airline can do it for you at any time during a check-in process. If you completely forget to do anything and the API remains wrong, on the basis of past (non-)incidents when flying in either direction, I would still place a small bet on nothing adverse happening.

I have two passports. Swiss and Canadian. I also travel pretty much all over the place. Sometimes I present a different passport than what I put in my API. As long as BA thinks your API is adequate and you have your documents on you, you'll be fine. If it doesn't match they'll just change it at check-in.

My experience is similar to thebigben's, though with UK and Swiss passports. Switzerland is not in the EU nor in the EEA but has free movement with the EU.

My plan is broadly to do the same as the OP, but probably asking checkin on return to swipe and enter the UK info. It would be simpler for me if BA had two API pages, but I doubt that this wil be offered.

Provided you have the right to enter a given country - by which I mean to say, 'absolute right', not eligibility for visa exemption, etc. - are there any practical issues concerning entering with a passport different to that in your API?

I also have two passports. When checking in (and honestly it's very rare that I actually do so at a desk), then I try and remember to use the passport that corresponds to the API. After checkin, any checks are limited to ID checks, ie that you are the person on the ticket, there's no check against a database. At immigration, they only seem to check whether you have a right to entry, never whether it corresponds to the API.
I doubt anything is going to change for the average traveller post-Brexit.

The UK needs to be added to a positive list for countries, where Schengen-EU allows visa free access for business/tourism/private for 90 days within a 180 day period.
Has the UK been added to the list already? It's a quite bureacratic process, as seen with Ukraine one year ago.

And what about my JER passport, issued by UK, with European Union on the cover? :)

I'm quite confident it will turn into a non-problem.

UK and Ireland are not part of Schengen and neither of them have any intention of joining. Both have separate visa requirements.

Both however are part of the Common Travel Area which will be unaffected by Brexit (even accounting for a hard border).

Citizens of UK and Ireland will be free to travel between both countries, however if you do not have a UK or Ireland passport, you can't avail of the CTA.

Ireland will still be free to enter for EU countries + switzerland. UK may or may not be.

You don't need a passport to avail of the CTA, you just need to be a citizen.

But that is not relevant to the post you were replying to by warakorn, who was talking about visits by British citizens to the Schengen area.

Hi slicktony,
If you wish to be 100% accurate with all the data and passports presented then the order you describe is correct. The only point to note though is that you'll need to update your booking with the passport details and not your BA account. The API data only goes from your BA account into the booking when you first add your account number. It doesn't do across at check-in. So if you update your account with new API data it won't 'flow through' to your current bookings.

Isn't there a rule that if you're entering a country you are citizen of, you must use that country's passport?

Some countries have that rule. I'm not sure that all countries do.