The system has been delayed a few times: Entry/Exit System (EES)

Well as a Canadian passport holder we certainly get no special treatment arriving back in Canada and you are correct in asking how can I get into the UK using a Canadian passport in less than a few minutes but have to line up for an hour to get back into Canada

There are plenty of EU airports where uk citizens can and do use automatic gates. Are you suggesting that they should disable it for Uk citizens after the Uk has disabled theirs for EU citizens and so on?

And are you proposing to cover the extra tax for all the manual handling created by that gesture too since egates are simply money savers, not ways to improve travellers’ lives?… ;)

10ish years ago I used to travel to the UK on business a fair bit and to save money did a "reverse ex-EU". I'd buy a ticket for YYC-LIN return and nest within that a separate ticket for LIN-LHR. I'd allow about 2 hours in LIN to have lunch in the lounge and head back to LHR.

I did this on a Canadian passport, and I was questioned a few times about why my ultimate destination was LHR as I'm stepping off the plane from LHR. They would ask to see my ticket, shrug, and stamp my passport.

But if that really is the reason, then having a nice looong queue for EU travellers entering the UK should go a little to beginning the talks on reciprocity. I don't see US immigration adding extra staff for non-US passport holders (not that it matters atm!) and I don't see EU border staff being added either.

I wonder if using his Aust passport to enter instead of the UK passport would have made things easier. I speak as someone in exactly the same position, and have considered doing just that but am yet to do so. Given that I may be able to use the EU's e-gates more regularly with an Aust passport makes me wonder I am yet to do this.....

There will also be a lot of annoyed British people travelling with under 12s in the queue.

I had similar in Prague last month. On entry the officer was definitely flicking back and forth seemingly trying to reconcile the dates. Can't remember the same on the way out, I think they just stamped and waved me on.

I had similar at BUD last week - they typically haven’t looked all that closely in the past, but the officer had a close look at all my stamps. No questions, though.

I do not think that you have thought this through. Of course, the resources issue is crucial. The problem would not be that Europeans would have to queue longer. It would be that the airport would be unable to operate safely due to excessive crowds. You would have to either redesign the airport and substantially increase the number of borderforce staff (assuming that you can find that staff, which is very far from a given) or reduce the number of people allowed to board UK-bound flights (in other words, reduce the number of flights). It would be a colossal example of inanely stupid policy of the cutting-your-nose-to-spite-your-face kind.

Cough.... eight and a half years' experience of that...

Sorry Honey - I have certainly seen gates for Uk passport holders at Alicante when arriving BA, and certainly at Roissy (CDG). I confess myself amazed at what happened to him. However, I always enter Europe (Schengen on my French passport and Him Indoors on his Irish passports. Maybe it is to do with EU entry post Brexit. I now use my French passport to give to the French or wherever police when leaving Schengen and my UK passport when I arrive in the UK.

If I missed thei BAfan Love - did they offer him any explanation for this extraordinary behaviour? I have known the Swedish police waiting on the jetway when we flew in from Madrid. As this has happened to corporate-wage-slave who was coming from the same location. Maybe Spanish arrivals have their antennae twitching.?

... well yes, so definitely no need to double-down on it. :)

I was in Gothenburg recently and immigration were asking all passengers from my BA flight about the purpose of their trip, evidence of funds and return bookings, hotel stays and so on. For such a relatively small airport, it took ages to get through, mainly as people had to find emails or booking confirmations on their phones. On a trip to Madrid and Nice a few weeks later, no questions were asked.

I don't think this is an EU/Schengen thing as such but more so down to the individual airport/country on how they process non-Schengen passengers.

It would be quicker to allow UK passengers to use e-gates, followed by a stamp by a passport officer at a booth - I've seen this done in Lisbon and Alicante for UK passport holders and it works well

I've had a few bits of questioning at GOT and ARN.
Where I'm staying, how long, proof of return ticket etc. Have had to show tickets, booking emails etc. one one or two occasions.
One reason why I avoid the short connections at HEL. A few minutes of questioning and you can miss a flight.

The question still remains if he had valid travel documents, a confirmed hotel stay and a return ticket out of the country, why was he denied entry?

Last time I went to Oslo the lady at border control flipped through my almost full passport full of stamps and just said “You must watch your days in Europe my friend. You must watch. Are you counting? I hope you are counting”

All with no time to respond. Stamped and through I went.

I was given a piece of knowledge that may prove useful and it has proved correct on several occasions.

If you are able to choose who you go to...be it an immigration officer or a customs officer...always choose the oldest ones.

The younger ones have everything to prove to their bosses and are keen to make an impression.The older ones couldn't give a toss as they are relatively senior in their role and don't have anything to prove.

The older ones in my experience won't interrogate as much, if at all.

Happened to me at HEL the last week. After I entered HEL, I tried to locate the stamp but it was so hard to find it even though the stamp was very clear and not over other stamps. I carefully checked all the pages, and finally found after 10 min or so.

When I was leaving HEL, the office could not find the entry stamp and asked me when it was. However, he was still struggling to find it and I roughly remembered where the stamp was. He finally found it and happily stamped. It's not only me, but I cannot explain why the particular stamp was not easily found!

Yeh this seems to be a Northern European obsession. In my experience no one gives a toss entering and exiting in Portugal, Spain and Greece.

HEL used to have the habit of stamping the last unused page at the END of the passport rather than following on from other countries.

I get that they are busy but it’s forever a bug bearer of mine that they don’t try to stamp in the next space to keep the stamps in some kind of chronological order.

She would have spontaneously combusted if you had dared to ask "Isn't the UK in Europe?"

The Nordics are appalling for being picky. I've just checked and despite hundreds of stamps in my 3 year old passport which I'll have to renew soon, I've spent 23 days in Schengen in the last 180. They're welcome to count if they like.

The EU gets way too much of a pass because of Brexit (the "it's all your fault for leaving the EU..." idea). The passport control is atrocious - literally using 19th Century techniques, and the saga with EES and ETIAS would be amusing if it wasn't such a pain in the neck - the technology that's in place is going to be obsolete soon and in comparison to some of even the poorer SE Asia countries is laughable. Actually, outside a few predictable bottlenecks - AMS, BRU, MAD, it's usually not that bad, but given there are attitude issues with the staff that waste everyone's time, it's really very poor. The UK does this better in all aspects, I don't honestly care if it's to save money (that's usually the goal of automation anyway) the system works well.

And yes I know they have 28 different systems to reconcile, but keeping a record of in and out isn't all that complex a proposition.

I’m Norwegian resident but lucky enough to be dual UK / Irish. Other Brits in Norway report plenty of this stuff.

Yes. It happened as described. And nothing more to it.

We’re both lawyers and have no reason to lie for likes.

Nope. They just said they didn’t believe him, and so he didn’t have a valid reason for entering the country.

Apparently a few other people were denied entry - including someone who’d flown from the US via LHR, who was also being sent back to LHR.

​​​​​​​I've recently been hassled in Tromso too....got quite a lecture on departure. The main allegation seemed to be that I did not know how many days I've been in Schegen over the past 180 days, and, instead of making up a number, I told the guard that I do not count them, so I do not know. The guard then tried to count up the number of days, but I've got so many stamps, a few ones missing entries, a few stamps on top of each other, that this was never going to succeed. The guard promptly gave up and returned to lecturing me.

So if they were denied entry and sent back to LHR does that mean that the airline (BA in this case) would be fined or some other sanction applied?

Which, with due respect, is saying more about the accuracy of what you "see" than about reality. ;)

As an example, France's border force alone, despite plenty of automation (but less than in the UK) is over 25% larger than the UK's despite having nearly twice fewer international entries (France gets a lot more visitors than the UK but the vast majority arrive from another Schengen country without border checks).

As for the US, its border force is 6 times larger than the UK's and no, that's nowhere near proportional to the number of entries either.

The whole suggestion that somehow, automated border control would not automatically imply very significant cuts in border force numbers (or that its reversal would not necessarily entail significantly larger needs for staff) is a complete non starter.

The financial reason rationale gets reeled out on every thread like this. We aren’t the only European country who needs to save money.

I am assuming he was getting more TP/lower cost ticket, etc for the route. Where was his originating airport? LHR?

99.99% of people don't do what FT do. I would assume the routing seemed suspicious to the border patrol agent, especially if they are ramping up questioning to everyone; to just overnight at Stockholm to only go back to LHR then to JFK. Why not just fly to JFK directly would be their mind set.

Indeed, which is why pretty much every European country is moving in that direction, most certainly including Schengen area countries. This has been delayed and in many countries poorly implemented (largely because the infrastructural choices are precisely organised by each country whilst the Schengen rules are area wide so discrepancies lead to huge problems) but be sure that if the whole continent could use a magic wand and switch to full automation they'd be waving like crazy!! Numerous trials of passport less border crossing too for the same reason.

My understanding is that the airline would only get a financial sanction if the documents being presented at the border by the traveller should have been rejected by the airline doing their document checks.

The airline can only go so far with their checks, they're not expected to get loup glasses out and check if documents are fake or manipulated, and are only expected to to take the documents at face value married with what TIMATIC says. Immigration officers usually have the ultimate discretion and power to refuse entry. This could be intelligence based data that their immigration systems have, and entry can be refused irrespective of whether a traveller is asserting visa-free, visa-on-arrival, ETA, or visa based entry, or any other form of entry (possiblity with the exception of diplomats?)

Mystery solved! :)

Full checks for EU nationals in the UK can easily be funded by adding a fee to air tickets, or, added to the cost of the ETAs now required.

The reality is HMG and especially the FCDO aren't so concerned with how UK nationals are treated abroad -- they don't see this as a problem and won't do anything about it.

I would suggest that the viewpoint of "if I have to suffer, everyone else should as well" is, perhaps, not quite in the spirit of FT where we actually try to help people. If the Home Office has developed efficiencies that mean the cost to UK taxpayers is less due to having to employ less Border Force employees then that's fine by me.

If the OP hadn't named the airport but had asked us to guess ARN would have been my call. I didn't have a hostile experience there, but it was much more extensive that anywhere else in the EU (and even in the US). Wanted to see every hotel reservation for the trip. 'Why are you changing hotels for the final night?' 'Can we see your return ticket?' Sweden is one of the few places where I still make sure to have everything printed off as their instinct doesn't seem to be to take people at their word.

Indeed ARN is also the airport where I have had my worst ever border control experience a couple of years ago. Their IT systems were down, but instead of processing people manually they were just refusing entry to everyone except Swedish nationals and residents (and the flight crew - it was a nightstopper).

They detained all non-Swedes in the pre-border control area for well over 1.5 hours. I can deal with queueing, but the uncertainty of not even knowing whether you could enter the country - they claimed "the border is closed indefinitely, you will be held until the morning" (this was at around midnight) - was most unpleasant.

It was only resolved once a critical mass of passengers threatened to call the police or to 'storm' the desks. At that point they magically started processing people manually, just as they could have done from the outset.

Allowing Swedes through, but not other EU citizens, was blatant discrimination in breach of the Schengen Border Code. Unfortunately my complaint to the Swedish Ombudsman didn't end up going anywhere because the Swedish border agency said "sorry". Well that's alright then, I guess :rolleyes:

Suffice it to say I am boycotting ARN for the foreseeable future. And that's as a dual UK/EU citizen...