The UK Is Expanding The ETA Visa.

The ETA visa works similarly to the ESTA form you must fill out before travelling to the US, costing £10.00. Now, I want to run through the UK ETA visa details in this article. Take it how you like. As always, this is my view and my opinion on this topic, so do it with it as you wish. The link to visa can be found here:

The ETA visa.

In November 2023, the UK launched an ETA visa for Electronic Travel Authorisation. Qatar was the culprit of this rollout. I’m not sure why Qatar, but there we are; Qatar residents must fill out this form to travel to the UK if they want to visit the UK. Fast-forward to this year. In February, the UK expanded it to other countries.

• Bahrain
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Oman
• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates

Before we go any further, let’s take a quick look to see who are the people who are exempt from this visa,

ETA visa exemption.

• a British or Irish passport holder
• Anyone with permission to live, work or study in the UK
• Anyone with a visa to enter the UK

Like many other countries, such as India, which I previously wrote about, Canada, including the US, where you need an ESTA if you’re planning to visit or even transit through the US, the same will apply here in the UK.

However, I can’t help but wonder how that would work out for someone? Let’s say a family of 5 travels from Dubai to Los Angeles. Now, if they were to transit via, that would be an additional £50.00 that they would have to spend to have the “privilege” of transiting in the UK, so my guess is many people would choose to transfer via Paris, for example, to avoid paying a fee.

The same argument wouldn’t be fair to make if you compared this situation to the US as the US is much bigger, so one can always choose to transit in a smaller airport where the queues are less likely to be a problem.

Conclusion.

I am trying to see how the UK ETA visa would work out in the future. I personally think that transit passengers should be exempt from this as airlines lose out on passengers connecting via London. Remember that 30% of people who land at London airports transfer onto other aircraft, so this number is very high. It would be interesting to see how this works out.