Postdoc

Pick n Pay will make a fortune selling pineapples and sugar.

wijibintheair

And don’t forget the yeast....this was a supermarket display in the last lockdown

Postdoc

Yup, there were still plenty of alcohol-fueled altercations during the last lockdown. Pineapple beer at 12% ABV carries a punch.

ghubregtse

BA57 out to JNB now cancelled for 7 and 8 Jan as well...

Postdoc

Our BA57 flight to JNB on Xmas eve was cancelled just before we were due to drive to Heathrow. Given last night's re-imposition of level 3 restrictions, we're rather glad BA made that decision.

lots@LHR

BA59 to CPT also cancelled on 7/8 Jan. one of the most competent and polite telephone operators at 00.20 U.K. time booked us on QR. Couldn’t change point of departure to MAN though.

EvilDoctorK

In case anyone is arriving from SA into the UK there's a manual process involving the Border Force agents 'recording something' which involves them taking away passports and putting you on the 'naughty chairs' at immigration for a few minutes ... purely administrative the guy was at pains to say this morning and nothing to worry about despite being put on the naughty chairs ! One wonders why they can't cull the necessary info from the already a submitted passenger locator form but there you go - clearly there's some other form of manual recording for SA arrivals .. anyway minor inconvenience, took a little longer this morning as there were 'too many South African arrivals' , but should only be a matter of minutes normally until they give it up. This was at LHR T2 but I assume it was elsewhere as well.

Of course no idea how it would work if you used the e-gates .. as clearly that manual process wouldn't happen since they'd presumably just let you through.

Confus

Second-hand info so I can’t vouch for reliability (and I’m not sure I give UKBF enough technical credit to be able to make this work), but I was told yesterday that the e-gates have been set to reject anyone whose APIS shows an itinerary originating in ZA and push them to the manual entry queue.

rc4566

I've booked the first available flights from CPT to LHR on the 13th of Jan but we are keen to get back sooner. Does anyone know if BA would be willing to book us onto QR at an earlier date once that flight is inevitably canceled?

edit: flying to LHR, not JNB

wijibintheair

We had our JNB-LHR cancelled and rebooked ourselves on QR via Doha. We were indeed pulled aside at immigration by border control. From what I understood from the officer that handled our arrival was that we were asked to wait until such time as they had spoken to and advised the local police in the area where we would quarantining. Presumably so that the police have been informed and may then check up on us.

As an aside, what I cannot understand is that the PLF is completed online and yet border control need to take your phone and then write down all the details with a pen and pad. Surely in this day and age you would show them your phone, they could enter the reference number and everything would be on their screen. The agent processing our arrival was literally zooming into the phone screen and writing down on a piece of paper all the details on the PLF.

EvilDoctorK

Interesting ... this morning anyway the guy who was doing ours had no interest in the locator forms at all , but he was writing stuff down from his computer terminal onto a scrap of paper and then took that plus the passports away to do whatever it was ( didn't say it was anything about alerting local police, but let's see ! )

Seems pretty massively inefficient anyway as you say .. since presumably the required info is in the PLF data anyway ... this morning there were two desks processing the EU manual queue at T2 - one was held up with something else and then the guy who was processing us left his desk and escorted us off do to his thing which probably meant he was away from his desk for 20 minutes .. so it looked like tough for whoever was behind us in the queue ( and it was getting quite long!)

AleTrail

I'm booked on BA59 on 8th Jan.
No cancellation email to me.
Manage My Booking is still showing BA59 on 8 Jan as operational.
Whilst I was onto BA gold line about something else I asked about BA59 on 8th Jan and they said it's still scheduled.

Often1

Setting up automated processes on the fly which also comply with both legal & practical data protection, cyber security and other mandates is not quite so simple as one would make out.

Countries which routinely monitor physical location and other data can be much more efficient and effective, but that is not necessarily a virtue even if it means a bit of idle time.

alex67500

I had mine checked on Monday in Paris at the eurostar terminal, before the e-gates. The BF officer had a handheld device which he used to scan the QR code at the top of the form, looked at the screen briefly, and gave me a paper slip to give to the border staff at St Pancras (it was the same slip for everyone, he had a pile in his hand). So it exists, but maybe it's a different branch of BF?

corporate-wage-slave

Subject to seating availability, QR would be a rebooking option plus or minus 3 days, usually. This would be for commercial bookings, redemptions may struggle due to the lack of codeshares at the moment.