Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.
People in the airline industry occasionally and unfairly misdescribe the CAA as the Campaign Against Aviation. While I believe the Civil Aviation Authority could do more to promote the interests of passengers, on the most fundamental metric of all – safety – the CAA has helped keep us safe for decades.
But from what I have seen this week, the government can reasonably be accused of acting against the best interests of UK aviation with its plans for the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). This online permit will start to become mandatory (initially only for citizens of Qatar) later this year. By the end of 2024, it will apply to all the many nationalities who come to the UK without needing a British visa.
It seems reasonable for a country to seek advance information about prospective visitors; the European Union will launch its Etias online scheme to do just that in the next couple of years (unless there are yet more delays). Etias will not apply to passengers changing planes at a European airport on a journey from one non-EU city to another.
Why should anyone who simply wants to catch a connecting flight by switching gates at Paris CDG, Amsterdam or Frankfurt, and who will not be crossing the EU border, have to handle the extra hassle and expense?
The principle of immunity from local immigration rules has underwritten international aviation for decades: stay “airside” and you need not worry about whether officials at the intermediate airport will let you through passport control.
Yet the UK, which appears increasingly at variance with the rational world, has become an outlier by insisting all connecting travellers must obtain an ETA. The Home Office, which has imposed the requirement, says: “Requiring transit passengers to obtain an ETA will stop transit being a future loophole for people to use to avoid needing an ETA.”
That statement is mystifying. International-to-international transit at Heathrow is already regarded as something of a loophole, enabling connecting passengers to claim asylum in the UK. The government seeks to counteract this by requiring some nationalities to obtain a Direct Airside Transit Visa.
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