Passport validity for European Union.
A UK passport must meet two conditions:
On day of entry to the EU, issued less than 10 years ago.
On intended day of exit from EU, at least 3 months left before expiry date.
(Also Switz/Iceland/Norway but not Ireland.)
People of Sheffield and Leeds: Rishi Sunak says he will quadruple the number of trains between Sheffield and Leeds.
As there are currently five per hour each way, that will mean 20 trains per hour: one every three minutes.
Rail boffins: can you help me understand how that works?
EXCLUSIVE
Taxpayers spent £500,000 pounds so the foreign secretary didn't have to fly to, from and within Australia on
@Qantas
.
Instead,
@trussliz
travelled 22,000 miles by private government Airbus A321, creating almost 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
#COP26
Dover: sympathy for all the people stuck on coaches for hours.
The UK asked for an European Union external frontier, similar to the hard borders the EU has with Russia and Turkey, to take effect in Kent, with every British passport inspected and stamped
Southampton to Newcastle: cheaper by cruise ship than rail or air.
Balmoral sets sail tomorrow evening from the Solent to the Tyne. The 2-night voyage, including all meals and entertainment, has been selling for £99.
Super off-peak train: £103
Flight: £161
On EU border access.
The UK asked for British travellers to become third-country citizens, the same as people from Tonga, Venezuela and dozens of other faraway lands, with passports stamped and scrutinised. And Europe delivered exactly what was asked for.
What’s your worst-value hotel stay? I’ll start. Just emerging from the TWA hotel at New York JFK. For a room that cost more than my flight to London, I won the building site view and the right to pay £12* for a “pint” of beer in a plastic glass. (*plus service)
Goodbye old friend: about to go through the UK border for the last time with my final European Union passport. It runs out tomorrow. “Dangerous” said the lady at the departure gate. I think she meant travelling with such little headroom before passport expiry, rather than Brexit.
Dover: did French border staff slack last weekend?
No, the port boss tells me.
“Police aux Frontieres turned up with the full complement of resource on the Friday. On Saturday, when they knew that we were having challenges, they turned up with more people"
Exclusive
Frontier checks for British travellers to Europe next summer could take 4x longer than now.
Reason: the UK asked to be treated as a "3rd country" after Brexit so subject to the fingerprinting and face biometric checks of the new Entry Exit System
Liz Truss's private jet to Australia.
Good work by
@politico
to uncover £15k spend on inflight catering (expensive even by
@Ryanair
standards).
But a tiny fraction of the total £500k bill for a trip for which Qantas scheduled flights would have worked fine
Hi from London, “crime capital of the world”.
In Birmingham? Beware “rotting rubbish” and “boarded-up buildings”.
Manchester is “the worst city in Europe for eco-friendly transport”.
The ruling party’s new social media campaign is doing wonders for tourism
Eurostar has cut the number of seats by 30% and is pushing up its fares.
Why? Extra post-Brexit passport checks mean London St Pancras can handle only 1,500 passengers per hour, down from 2,200.
The boss of the Channel Tunnel train firm says it can't go on
Key Brexit policy: ban EU citizens from holidays in the UK using national identity cards.
Overnight 200 million-plus potential visitors to the UK with ID cards but no passports were excluded.
“A disastrous act of economic self-harm” says top tourism leader
Rail: the ultimate example of crazy train ticketing?
Edinburgh-London on Saturday morning.
LNER says the cheapest ticket to King's Cross is £200.
Avanti West Coast has a £125 fare.
Yet from Haymarket, 1 mile away, you pay just £91 on either line to London.
A story just published on another news site is headlined "Furious British expats blast EU's new post-Brexit travel rules".
Just to be clear: there are no "new" travel rules. They are the same as apply to all other visa-free third countries.
Full story here
Mordor is a late addition to the green list, being slightly more accessible than the South Sandwich Islands.
Rumours that Ryanair plans flights from Stansted, though they will actually touch down in Gondor (known as Mordor West).
Narnia also on the cards for the next green list.
Is Brexit partly causing flight chaos?
No, says aviation minister: "It looks as if Brexit has little if anything to do with it."
But this morning the easyJet boss told me: “We have had to turn down a huge number [8,000] of EU nationals because of Brexit.”
BREAKING Best foot forward: Brits urged to wear flip-flops or sandals for Euro passport checks from Oct 2024.
When the Entry Exit System begins, UK travellers to the EU will have to give toe prints + facial biometrics.
Aim is to swerve legal cases over right to take fingerprints.
The majority vote to leave the UK means British travellers to the European Union are treated as third-country nationals.
From May 2023, passport stamping on arrival will end. But every traveller will have to be fingerprinted and provide a facial biometric.
Earlier this year, as foreign secretary, Liz Truss chose to spend £500,000 of taxpayer money and generate nearly 500 tonnes of CO2 flying to Australia and back on a big private jet, even though equally convenient Qantas scheduled flights were going anyway.
If BA or easyJet cancel your flight you are due a full refund within a week
But both airlines have removed the website refund option, to try to get passengers to accept a voucher instead
To get actual money back you must phone the airline within a year from the date of the flight
Tragic news from Hays Travel: the founder, John Hays, has died.
John was a brilliant travel entrepreneur, providing great service for countless customers and creating jobs for thousands of great staff.
He was also a very decent man.
Thoughts with Irene and the rest of his family.
Final Disneyland Express preparing to depart this morning, the latest casualty of Brexit in the incredible shrinking Eurostar network.
Renovation work at Amsterdam means by this time next year there may be only 4 stations: London, Paris, Brussels and Lille
London St Pancras International is in chaos.
All Eurostar and Southeastern trains this morning cancelled due to flooding in the tunnel beneath the Thames.
Many Thameslink services cancelled due to staff shortage.
Trying to find out what I can and will report as soon as possible.
Cheap and cheerful. No, not me: the excellent Hotel Venezia in Trento, far northern Italy. Do you have a recommendation of a two-star (approx) family-run hotel in Europe or beyond?
Brexit ban on tourists from the EU using ID cards has begun to be reversed.
Insisting on passports almost obliterated school group travel to the UK. From next year the ban has been lifted for children attending French schools, with others likely to follow.
Breaking news: the UK will award Green List status to every European nation that voted for us in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021.
(Thanks to Robert Page for the revelation).
EU travel after Brexit transition ends on 31.12.20
It turns out the UK voted for:
Higher travel insurance and mobile roaming costs.
Tougher passport rules.
Pet travel rules so complex that BBC man says: "Pets of Great Britain, say farewell to the Dordogne”
EU passport rules.
Still hearing sad tales of British travellers unaware that, since Brexit, UK passports must:
On the day of travel to EU, be less than 10 years old
On day of return from EU, have 3 months' validity
Check issue and expiry dates, please.
@AndyBurnhamGM
Hi Andy, Simon Calder from The Independent. Trying to replicate your air fares.
Please tell me the cities and the travel dates?
Here's what I've found for travel on Monday:
Mumbai via Abu Dhabi £607
Montego Bay via Atlanta £1,080
Rio via Lisbon: £1,599
Abidjan via Brussels: £901.
"No foreign holidays until everyone is vaccinated at home and abroad." Yes, that is what the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has just told
@BBCBreakfast
.
Eurostar is having to leave thousands of seats unsold on trains between London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam because post-Brexit passport checks mean stations could not cope if Eurostar filled its trains.
Morning trains capped at just 550 out of 900 seats
Thoughts with the loved ones of the victims of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103.
Thirty-five years ago today, the Boeing 747 on a London-New York flight was destroyed over Lockerbie in Scotland.
All 259 passengers and crew lost their lives, along with 11 people on the ground.
Uk passport validity for EU.
Sad to see more cases of travellers turned away at airports.
Your UK passport must pass these tests:
On day of travel to EU, under 10 years since issue date.
On day you intend to leave the EU, at least 3 months to expiry date.
Rail ticket office closures.
June: Government asks train operators to come up with radical proposals to close ticket offices.
July: Rail Delivery Group, representing firms, does so.
October: Government decides it was a terrible idea all along and U-turns.
International travel allowed coronavirus to spread swiftly and lethally across the world.
But now the Covid travel rules have been cruelly rewritten.
Every travel job lost
Every dream of escape crushed
Every family reunion wrecked
rests with the government
HS2.
From the wreckage of a world-beating example of how to foul up a giant infrastructure project, surely the winners are travellers between Birmingham and London?
Wrong. The very last thing the nation needs is a stand-alone link between these two cities.
Good morning. What's the view outside your window today? I'll start: Weston-super-Mare in Somerset. Normally I get the car park view, but here's a panorama across the Bristol Channel towards Wales.
New cheap trains between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh begin 25 October. One-way fares from £14.90.
One-class, brand-new trains in competition with LNER.
But the main aim of "Lumo," as it is interestingly called, is to grab travellers from the airlines.
If you are one of the 36,000 affected passengers just sent a cancellation message, let me make clear – because easyJet doesn’t – that you can INSIST on a flight on your original day of travel, including on a rival airline such as British Airways or Ryanair, at easyJet’s expense.
Which is the best way to reduce the risk that British travellers in Croatia contract the virus?
(a) Let them stay on the beach on Friday and return on their planned weekend flights
(b) Set an arbitrary 4am deadline, triggering hectic journeys across Europe
BA refund update.
Your booking has been cancelled? Airline must repay you.
The cancellation email encourages you to accept a voucher; normal refund facility has been disabled.
But if you call 020-3250 0145 and DO NOT PRESS 1 a human will arrange cash back. Only a 10 min wait now.
April 2020: Heathrow boss writes to health secretary Matt Hancock asking for a common international standard for pre-flight testing
January 2021: UK set to introduce pre-flight testing for some arriving travellers
Official confirmation expected later today
Incidentally as I approach hour 2 on hold to
@easyJet
, I must say the hold music is excellent. It starts with Rag’n’Bone Man (Human) and continues with Daft Punk, Ed Sheeran and many other top artistes.
Older travellers may recall Dial-a-Disc: it’s like that without the crackles.
Passports. Five years ago, only one in 1,000 of “straightforward applications” took longer than three weeks.
Today, three in 1,000 applications take longer than 10 weeks.
It turns out there are no plans for reducing the target time to its pre-Covid level.
Public transport prioritised in Germany.
The unlimited travel pass, valid nationwide, is coming – price €49 (£43) for each calendar month, starting in May.
For £1.40 per day you can go anywhere on trams, buses and trains (except for the fastest expresses)
Inbound tourism is an economic and social marvel. It represents free money and increased amenities for the local community.
So banning EU citizens from holidaying in the UK with their ID cards was pure self-harm.
Thankfully the government is rolling back.
Most – and least – central railway station?
Which UK railway station is at the very heart of a city – and which is annoyingly distant?
Edinburgh Waverley is in the middle of everything; Cardiff is pretty good, too.
But Cambridge and Plymouth are a hike away from the city centres.
You're in France, fully jabbed.
Due to the Beta variant on Réunion Island, almost all of France is "amber plus": quarantine needed on return to the UK.
To avoid self-isolation, just spend 10 days somewhere on the regular amber list.
Such as Réunion Island
Welcome to Britain?
Two years ago inbound tourism was the UK's third-biggest employer and fifth-largest export earner.
Today it is reduced to tatters, according to the industry leader – destroyed by onerous, incoherent and unpredictable travel restrictions
New Covid travel restrictions.
These are the questions I have put to the government:
Any restrictions on passengers who travel from mainland China to the UK via third countries?
% of passengers to be tested on arrival?
If they test positive, must they self-isolate or quarantine?
The government stipulates complex, onerous and expensive testing rules for international travel.
Then it assists companies that mislead passengers with their marketing.
World-beating folly.
People of London: good Tube news. The City branch of the Northern Line has opened EARLY. I’m at the new Bank Station. Was due to start Monday morning but they suddenly went for it on Sunday afternoon. Borough Station also bright and beautiful. No longer a vortex of travel despair
20 years ago this week Concorde made her final passenger flight.
The supersonic jet could chase the sunset at 1,350mph. Amazing.
But you heard Concorde long before you saw her, and she devoured fuel.
All to benefit the super-entitled, plus the odd courier.
France and UK: 21 miles apart across the Channel yet with very different transport priorities.
French transport minister: “We are enormously reducing the money we put on the road, to put it on the train, public transport. For the first time, we are going to stop highway projects"
#Routes
| « On réduit énormément l'argent que l'on met sur la route pour le mettre sur le train, les transports publics. Nous allons pour la première fois arrêter des projets autoroutiers. »
#C
àVous
“What is the logic of quarantining double-jabbed Brits returning with negative tests from countries with no known variants & far lower Covid-19 rates than the UK?"
@BenPBradshaw
is back from Italy and not entirely happy with the UK government restrictions.
Jet2 first flew 20 years ago, from Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam. I was aboard the maiden flight and didn't expect the operation to last long before easyJet or Ryanair swooped. Happy to have been proved wrong.
BA, Virgin Atlantic and Heathrow will all be hit by a new demand for non-UK/Irish transit passengers to pay £10, fill in an ETA online form and wait for up three days – even if only moving from one gate at Terminal 5 to another, with an hour on the ground.
Dover.
By Monday, it is likely that the coach backlog will be cleared after a miserable weekend for 20,000 passengers.
In a bid to avoid future problems, expect rigorous controls to be mandated on the number of cars and coaches hoping to depart from Dover.
Thomas Cook: all 555 high street shops grabbed in one swoop by Hays Travel. Already 421 ex-TC staff have been hired by Hays, and others are invited to call 0800 215 5995
Lots of talk about booking random Airbnbs in Ukraine and paying for them with no intention of staying, to transfer cash to the country.
Warning: were I a Russian scammer, I would be setting up fake Airbnbs in Kiev and Odessa as fast as I could to cash in on those noble intentions
A new Club 18-30, where the main activity is free movement?
The UK negotiated for the same rights as Venezuelans in terms of travel to the European Union, But now Brussels proposes four-year, unrestricted stays for young people to move between the UK & EU.
How have those Brexit promises on travel turned out?
We were told:
"No changes for UK citizens to work/study/live in the EU"
"No devaluation of £"
"No border in the Irish Sea"
"No impediments for visitors from the EU"
The outcome has been rather different.
What's your best breakfast location?
I'll start: the former ballroom of the Grand Hotel in Łódź, central Poland. Under two hours from Stansted airport and even more opulent.
#TrailOfTheUnexpected
Dover update:
Queues cleared in the early hours of this morning.
Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover: “It’s not a Brexit issue. It’s been the same for many years.”
Not everyone agrees.
Expect capacity restrictions for future peaks = less space and higher fares.
Air safety.
The loss of five lives at Tokyo Haneda yesterday was a tragedy.
The safe evacuation of 379 lives of passengers and crew aboard the Japan Airlines aircraft has been called a miracle.
Yet I think it was a testament to aviation professionalism.
Covid-related flight cancellations are back.
50 Gatwick flights cancelled/diverted on Sunday and many others delayed due to air-traffic controllers contracting the virus.
As a result 8,000 passengers, mostly on easyJet, woke up where they didn't want to be
France: zone dangereuse from the UK perspective, making it the sole member of the medium-high risk alpha plus category.
The reason: concern about high level of Beta variant on the island of Réunion,
@DominicRaab
confirms.
But Réunion itself is plain amber.
Charlie Stayt: Someone listening to you is going to say, ‘I listened to the health secretary today, he said “go ahead and book”’.
Or they’ll say, ‘I listened to the health secretary today and he said “don’t book your holiday”.’
Which of those two is it?
Matt Hancock: It’s neither
If, like me, you aren’t part of the great getaway this weekend, tell me the overseas destination where you'd love to be right now – and why.
I’ll start: looking out from La Terrasse, a bar above the shocking pink lagoon of Gruissan, southwest France.
Rejoice! This dream destination is now on the government's green list.
The weather forecast for next Wednesday, though, is cloudy and minus 44C, with a 25% chance of snow.
This is the age of the plane.
On 1 April, Air Passenger Duty will be halved for UK domestic flights.
The leading beneficiaries: airlines flying between Edinburgh and London.
Conversely, the losers: train operators between the Scottish and English capitals.
As rules for travellers from France are toughened, the boss of Britain's biggest budget airline, easyJet, has accused the government of "making it up as they go along and causing confusion and uncertainty".
Eurostar.
For anyone regrettably deciding to abandon the trip: you are offered first: "Cancel your booking and claim an e-voucher"
Ignore this option.
Unlike some airlines, there's no incentive.
The voucher is not for "A trip to Paris", merely the fare you paid.
So claim a refund
Gibraltar is, I believe, the only location in Europe where British travellers can currently go with no coronavirus restrictions in either direction. I was there at the weekend, and this is how I spent the time.