If you are travelling with British Airways to the United States after March 7, expect long delays if you don’t check in online. That is the message coming from travel agents and the airline in the run-up to the carrier implementing new US legislation which requires passenger information to be supplied in advance.
Although the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) legislation has been in place since October 2005, British Airways says it intends to comply fully with the legislation from March 7 for passengers travelling on its 38 daily flights to the US.
The APIS rules mean that non-US residents flying to the States now need to provide details of their country of residence and where they are staying on the first night of their visit. This is in addition to information already held inside your passport.
Norman Gage, director of business travel at independent travel agency network Advantage, says: “British Airways will have a problem for passengers not checking in online with security. Someone will need to get that information before they board.”
In a speech to business travel agents at the end of January, BA boss Willie Walsh said: "We are urging all customers travelling to the US to visit ba.com before coming to the airport and enter their details or give them to their travel agent at time of booking.
"The more data we can collect pre-airport the better it will be for all of our customers. If you can spare us five minutes online before coming to the airport it will save you extra time and hassle at check-in."
The push to make people enter this information and check in online is also likely to have a knock-on effect for passengers using British Airways’ Fast Bag Drop, increasingly being referred to as “Slow Bag Drop” by regular passengers.
The rising number of people checking in online and using BA’s self-service kiosks means that the queues to drop off bags have been growing longer. In some cases, it takes just as much time to use self-service check-in and then queue for Fast Bag Drop as it does to use traditional check-in.
“Fast Bag Drop will be an issue for British Airways until they redeploy staff,” says Advantage’s Norman Gage.
