Renew Registered Traveller?
 

I am coming up for renewal of my Registered Traveller status in early March. I had read that e-passport would become available to USA passport holders in early 2019? Is this still the case?

Yes the U.K. government has announced that passport holders from a small number of countries will be able to use the e-gates to,enter the U.K. ( not an e-passport) but no specific date has been announced only the vague ‘summer’.

Does anyone know if e-Gates means all the same benefits as Registered Traveller scheme? For example, RTs don't have to fill out a landing card. Will that be the case for US passports going forward once this changes?

The way the e-gates currently work, there is no place to put a landing card. That could be changed, of course.

The question is are there any other benefits other than using the E-gates? At one time if the E-gates were down you could use the EU lines if you had Registered Traveller. Is that still the case? Are there any ports of entry without E-gates that you get to skip the ROW (Rest Of World) mass lines if you have Registered Traveller? Etc.

noone really knows at the moment, the most upto date info can be found on gov.uk

ePassport gates eligibility expansion confirmed for June

This would tend to imply that there are no additional benefits other than the e-gates:

Dear Richard,

Your Registered Traveller Service (RTS) membership

From June 2019 nationals of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States of America will be able to use the ePassport Gates routinely for free, without needing RTS membership.

As a result of this change, we are no longer accepting new or renewal RTS applications from nationals of these seven countries .

We have made arrangements for the fee you paid to be refunded to the card you used for payment. This process can take up to seven days.

Kind regards,

Registered Traveller Team

I was told by one officer (so YMMV) that RT means I can have my pick of lines - EU e-gates, EU staffed, and ROW. However I've never tested it - in fact often at STN the ROW line had nobody in it whereas the e-gates had several people queuing for each gate, so I self-banished to the ROW section.

I've seen it mentioned in several places (although never sourced with legislation) that UK Border Force officers are legally required to process anybody who presents themselves to them, and the lines leading up to said officers are purely traffic management from the airport.

That said, you would likely receive pushback from the Heathrow 'Helpers' or equivalent.