U.K. Transit Without Visa between different cities
 

I will be traveling to the EU Schengen Area this summer from the United States this summer with my SO. I am U.S. Citizen, however she is a PRC passport holder and a U.S. permanent resident.

Currently, we have round-trip flights booked US-MAN. Our plan right now is to arrive into Manchester, spend the night in London, and fly out of London to a Schengen destination (e.g. Berlin) the following day, and the reverse on the route back. According to Gov.UK, I was given the following when checking for Visa requirements for transit:

"Transiting without a visa
You might be eligible for ‘transit without visa’ if:

* you arrive and depart by air
* have a confirmed onward flight that leaves on the day you arrive or before midnight on the day after you arrive
* have the right documents for your destination (eg a visa for that country)
One of the following must also apply:

* you’re travelling to (or on part of a reasonable journey to) Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA and have a valid visa for that country
* you’re travelling from (or on part of a reasonable journey from) Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA and have a valid visa for that country
* you’re travelling from (or on part of a reasonable journey from) Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA and it’s less than 6 months since you last entered that country with a valid entry visa
* you have a residence permit issued by Australia or New Zealand
* you have a common format residence permit issued by an European Economic Area (EEA) country or Switzerland
* you have a residence permit issued by Canada issued after 28 June 2002
* you have a uniform format category D visa for entry to a country in the EEA or Switzerland
* you have an Irish biometric visa (marked ‘BC’ or ‘BC BIVS’ in the ‘Remarks’ section) and an onward flight ticket to the Republic of Ireland
* you’re travelling from the Republic of Ireland and it’s less than 3 months since * you were last given permission, on the basis of holding a valid Irish biometric visa, to land or be in Ireland
* you have a valid USA permanent residence card issued by the USA on or after 21 April 1998
* you have a valid USA I-551 Temporary Immigrant visa issued by the USA (a wet-ink stamp version will not be accepted)
* you have an expired USA I-551 Permanent Residence card issued by the USA on or after 21 April 1998, with a valid I-797 letter authorising extension
* you have a valid standalone US Immigration Form 155A/155B issued by the USA (attached to a sealed brown envelope)
You won’t be able to transit without a visa if a Border Force officer decides you don’t qualify under the immigration rules. You can apply for a transit visa before you travel if you’re unsure whether you qualify for transiting without a visa."

What I am uncertain about is whether "transit" is acceptable between different cities, such as US-MAN/LHR-EU? I have tried e-mailing through the contact form on Gov.UK several times now and keep getting the same non-informative copy/paste reply. I would rather not pay to call the UKVI pay phone line (which is ridiculous IMO), so I was hoping that someone here at FT might know more or had experience with this in the past?

Thanks!

The fact your onward destination is to somewhere in the Schengen area is essentially irrelevant.
(Given that the UK is not part of Schengen, the only relevance is to whether UK immigration consider you would have any obstacle to entry to where you are going, and what potential there might be for you to be denied entry / refused travel to there).

So one question would likely become can you satisfy them you qualify for entry to that Schengen area country - do you have the right visas/passport types, etc.

To answer your specific question:

Firstly, changing 'city' of airport is in itself perfectly fine, indeed given the catchment area of many airports overlaps I would not get concerned about what city name it prefixes itself with..
(e.g. Birmingham airport is virtually as easy to transit to in London compared with transiting to any 'London' airports').

Indeed, unless an airport is setup to provide international airside connections (which only a limited number in the UK are) then it makes little difference whether you are transiting between flights in the same terminal, different terminals, or different airports.

However, I would expect to be asked (given the abundance of route links between Europe and North America) why you have chosen this route - both going via the UK and also with a distance between connection points). And I'd expect to be asked how you plan to travel between Manchester airport and your London departure airport (don't dismiss the distance between the two).

Indeed, personally, I'm also curious about this.
Even if traveling as cheaply as possible in economy, I can't believe that this will be cheaper for you, or less hassle. Especially doing it both directions.

This is interesting, because at the top of your note is says clearly that you "might" be entitled to a TWOV.

However, the airline has to make a call on this before you get on the plane in the US. If you are denied entry, they will be on the hook for a penalty which I believe is £2,000 plus detention and repatriation costs.

So a gate agent in the US has to second guess what the immigration officer is going to say. I wouldn't be trying this myself - you have to admit it does look like a rather dubious strategy!

UK immigration will ask the same question and will be even more curious

You fail the reasonable journey test. You're visiting the UK, not transiting

The TIMATIC information is a bit more explicit.

I think your journey fails the "no other purpose" test. The exception is not really intended for the purpose you are using it for. It is there, I believe, to allow people to make overnight transits at the same airport, where the airside area is closed overnight.

I would say, either obtain a visa or skip the visit. You don't want the rest of your holiday ruined by a denied entry.

If you re-read my post - even just the bit of it you quoted - then you will see that I was saying that.

Depends how the OP presents the purpose of their trip.
I would agree with the point that it is not there to permit quick trips to the UK, it is there for the purpose of making a connection, however:

That I would disagree with. It is there for people to make connections. But connections can be perfectly reasonable if they involve changing airport (lots of places only connected to 1 london airport, so to go between them, need to connect) or even to change city.

I.e. there are plenty of journeys which would involve a change of airport (and city) to make the connection and are perfectly reasonable.

However, I would agree with you that there is a 'reasonableness test', and as I was trying to get across in my earlier reply. It is a reasonableness and plausibility test.

There are so many ways to travel from USA to Schengen area countries that don't involve a separate ticket connection - and such an extreme change of airport - that it will be very hard to present this as reasonable or plausible.

I'd agree best to get a visa or change plan.
(Or post something that helps explain this travel routing - as clearly all of us here think this looks too odd to go smoothly)

Immigration officers the world over dislike "odd" & the unusual as the assumption will be that some illegality will be involved. This plan is most definitely "odd"

Just out of curiosity then David-A, are there [m]any origin cities that have flights to the UK but not to London and thus would necessitate an intercity UK connection that would pass a reasonability test?

I would imagine that if an airline flies to the UK, they'd at least fly to one of London's airports among others?

I agree this will be seen as 'odd' or 'unusual' so the OP and their partner may be subject to additional scrutiny.

People flying into say LHR then out of LGW is not that unusual but into MAN then out of LON could raise some flags. Are there any airlines that fly from the USA into MAN but not LON?

There are lots of flights to europe from MAN as well so that will add to the flags.

Another is that you ex-UK into Europe flights will be on a separate PNR as you have not even booked them yet.

There are direct flights from Amritsar to Birmingham and I don't believe that route is served from London - but obviously you could fly domestically in India first then connect...

There's currently an attractive AA Business Class fare from MAN to various US cities, mostly notably SAT. I don't know if ex-SAT to MAN is also competitively priced, but if so it might explain why the OP is taking this routing rather than flying directly into LHR.

Nonetheless, that's still a difficult thing to sell to an immigration officer, and will raise all sorts of suspicions.

Unfortunately the OP hasn't come back to us to explain how (s)he intends to travel between MAN and LHR - if it's by train or road, I'd imagine that will raise massive concerns. If by air, much less so, and a MAN-LHR-TXL routing probably wouldn't be too far out of the ordinary.

What is somewhat less clear is why an overnight in London would be necessary anyway - the flight would presumably land early morning, leaving plenty of time to reach Berlin the same day even with a LHR connection.

In immigration terms it does very much look more like a visit, however fleeting, than a transit. I'd also be looking at getting a visa.

Havn't checked in a couple of years, but certainly 5-10 years ago I can recall seeing quite a few examples where whole countries (let alone specific cities within them) were only connected to one UK airport, so travelling between them in the UK (and the UK might be the most sensible connection point) meant travelling between airports.

With another point being flight frequency. On some of these combinations, inter airport transfer being the only option to complete the journey within a short time window (e.g. a service combination between two places that is not daily).

And I repeat - even though there is a reasonableness/practicality element to moving between specific airports, any airport change, is an airport change.

(My understanding is that land side transfer at a single airport (even if inter terminal) is viewed in a slightly more relaxed fashion than inter-airport (on the basis that if there is serious concern, or later un-expected level of concern, someone can always be accompanied or transported airside - even if airside transfer is not formally offered for as an option).

Continuing on that point (any change is a change) branding of Luton airport as 'London Luton' is a (relatively) recent thing.
I can recall plenty of countries that were only connected to one london airport (and perhaps not daily). But where other flights went to Birmingham or Manchester (on different days).

If you are willing to relax it to cities, I'm sure the numbers will go up.
But I've not checked for them in 5-10 years.
(But I really do mean 5-10 years, so well into the mid 2000s. I'm not making comparisons with ancient history)

Given that the OP is starting in the USA, there is only one airport there with any non-stop flights to Manchester at all that doesn't have at least daily non-stop flights to London. This exception is Sanford, where Manchester gets three flights a week in summer and London only gets two. But as all these flights are on Thomson, which is scarcely known in the USA, the suggestion that this whole itinerary is the result of a bargain fare to MAN seems highly likely.