bambinomartino

We're entering the UK with a 6-month old, and for a variety of reasons, including that we're travelling with an infant, need to breeze through passport control. I am a dual EU/Canadian passport holder, the wife and kids are Canadian only. I think we may be able to go through the EU/EEA etc. line (?) but even that may take too long.

I am looking at the booking interface, and it only allows to input the number of adult (7 GBP) and child (2 and up, 5 GBP) travellers. No option for infants. There is nothing in the FAQ, my email inquiry is yet to be answered, and their twitter team will "get back to me"... perhaps. I am inclined to draw a parallel with the generally free/no cost treatment infants under 2 enjoy in a variety of air travel contexts, but cannot be sure. Yes, I can pay a few quid for the baby and the number of reservations will match the number of travellers, but I don't want to if I don't need to, and it's also becoming a bit of a matter of principle. It's been very frustrating to deal with the incredible lack of uniformity across European airlines with regard to travelling with an infant (stroller/car seat allowances, bizarre booking methods for seat infants, etc.).

Has anyone had any experience with this?

bambinomartino

I thought I'd provide an update, in case someone else has the same issue (and takes everything literally like I do).

It took Gatwick's customer service staff a few days, but they did reply. Even though there is no option to make a reservation for a child under the age of 2, they advised that I will need to purchase a pass for the 6-month old. I wasn't surprised because in the days after I'd initially asked the question, I looked at the other UK airports' analogous services, and they all seemed to only care about and charge based on the total number of passengers.

Perhaps I should have posted this partial screenshot of the first step of the reservation process in the original post to illustrate:




So I made the reservation, but something else came up on the next screen that left me a bit confused, again: the "Return Flight" field. Granted, I am a non-native speaker of the English language who lives in North America, so I may be mistaken. But a return flight to me means the second portion of a round/return trip which may be days or months into the future.

I assume they want to know what inbound flight we'll be on. I suppose a passport control officer may want to know when we will be leaving the UK, so that could be relevant, but what about people who haven't finalized their travel plans, or UK residents returning (could that be why they named the field that way?) home? It's a required field, so what would a Brit coming back from vacation put in there?

I was very excited to see the little question mark to the right, which I hoped would say something like "enter the flight on which you will be arriving", but as you can see, as the mouse hovers over, the explanation simply says... "Return Flight Number". Well that sure clears it up!

bambinomartino

Oh, and the confirmation email contained instructions that began as follows:

My first thought was, holy poop, I booked the wrong type of service, because the beginning of the sentence conjures up images of rolling up in a taxi and arriving at the airport. "Upon disembarking.... " or something along those lines would be preferable, I think.