BA Travel Experiences in EU - post January 1st
 

Thought a thread on this might be useful given our change in EU status and how UK citizens will be treated differently regarding Immigration, EU rules app;lying on UK folks travelling during Covid etc. My daughter is travelling to AMS on Saturday 2nd (back to uni) so will report on her LHR and AMS experiences.

Some of her friends have taken a BA flight back to AMS in the last few days and mentioned many pax being turned away and denied travel on BA (and KLM for that matter) because they arrived with the NHS PCH test results and not a privately paid for one. Is being rigidly enforced apparently. Bizarre that pax are doing this, there has been enough publicity about the NHS ones not being valid! :rolleyes:

That is very encouraging to hear!

The NHS should branch out into travel insurance and all inclusive holidays. Could be a money spinner for them. 😂

If the NHS test is PCR as required for destination, and you get proper pdf/document to confirm (not just sms) there doesn't seem to be immigration reason to say it's invalid (and indeed I would pursue IDB compensation). unless the test result say invalid for travel or words to that extent.

I had no idea that NHS tests are not valid for travel. I thought you were not supposed to use the NHS service but I didn’t know it was an actual rule. Why would an airline care about where you took the test? It would have never occurred to me to use an NHS test anyway, as they don’t guarantee the turnaround time.

Could it be that they were denied boarding because the tests were too old?

Do the NHS tests show your passport number?

No

Nor do many commercial tests I have taken

I am a uni student who's going back to Amsterdam too.

I'm also in a Facebook group of a lot of people travelling back and a few have been denied boarding for NHS tests, so it definitely doesn't work. I'm going to use Citydoc through BA's website for a PCR test that's £93. That's the best I've found so far.

Has anyone dared to look into the actual cost of doing a PCR test and if there are immoral profits being made ?

I was talking with a consultant in Cyprus and he showed me the long list of medical tests available, blood tests, swabs etc all of which are considerably cheaper than the costs of a PCR test. Is there some reason that PCR tests cost anywhere between 50-150 GBP

As this is all third-hand at best and the individuals who were denied boarding are not on this thread, it will be hard to get to the bottom of it, but I have to wonder whether the issue is not whether the test was conducted by the NHS but whether the certification of the test result was, in the instance of that group, insufficient.

The requirements are made by the Dutch authorities and the burden of checking placed on BA/KL. But, BA/KL are not making social judgments.

And when we were in Cyprus, we were told the cosat of a test is capped at 65 Euros wherever it is carried out.

If you need a PCR test accepted by airlines, please use the Heathrow-endorsed service at https://www.expresstest.co.uk/

So to try and bring things back on topic and away from which tests to use, presumably from 1st January we can no longer use the EU Citizens passport lines when travelling abroad, or can we? What about EU visitors to the UK? Can they continue to use the E-Gates or not? Obviously use of the E-Gates is available to other nationalities now too, so my wife (US citizen) can use them when we arrive from the USA. Having seen the queues at immigration at BRU for those passengers without EU passports I'd hate to be in that boat now.

We can’t automatically use the EU line from 01 Jan but individual countries / airports may allow other citizens to use those lines, as they can at LHR. I’m trying to think where I have seen it, and it’s definitely somewhere I’ve been this year, but I saw a UK flag next to an EU flag, AUS, JPN flag - indicating that we could use the lines post this year?

EDIT: I’ve said above that UK citizens can’t automatically use EU lines, I haven’t read the exit agreement so may be wrong 🤷🏻‍♂️