I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in the middle of Heathrow Airport in London. I arrived here just over 4 hours ago after an overnight flight from Canada. It's only a one-night stopover. Tomorrow, I'll be continuing on to my real first stop of this trip, in one of my favourite countries in Europe.
The key reason I'm posting this is to warn anyone planning to travel to the United Kingdom, even if it's just for a short stopover like this. Actually, there are two warnings. I'm going to take them in reverse order.
First and foremost, you have to get an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) before you travel. No ifs, ands, or buts. There's an application fee, and you can get it online, applying at least 3 days in advance to be safe. When I applied, I got the authorization back in about 30 minutes.
If you don't remember to get it, here's what happens. Arriving at Heathrow, Canadian passport holders can use the electronic E-Gates to pass immigration control. You plant your passport onto the scanner and wait a few seconds. Face the camera on the gate, it takes your picture, and a moment later the gate pops open and you're through.
At least, you're through if you got the ETA. The wait to use the E-Gates was slower than usual today because so many people were being refused admission, and each one got sent over to the side to speak to an officer. Smart money says that these are the people who hadn't gotten their ETA.
Second warning: don't get scammed when you are getting it. I did. Here's how. When you search for the ETA on your search engine of choice, it will return a whole range of results. The first ones, on Google, were advertisements. I knew that I was looking for the official website, "Gov.UK", but I got snagged by a featured website which displayed those words prominently. This deceptive beast charged me a hefty additional fee for the ETA. In actual fact, all that sneaky website did was present me with a link to the official Gov.UK website. Grrr.
Be warned.
So far, there is no parallel travel permit required for Europe, but their system (ETIAS) is coming. Last word says it will be up and running in 2026. That said, I had to do a whole routine of scanning my passport with my phone to complete my online check-in for my flight tomorrow to the continent.
No comments:
Post a Comment