Transit visa - wtf?

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Caporegime
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Got someone flying from Saffrica to Berlin in a couple of weeks, British Airways. Stopover at Heathrow, apparently he needs a transit visa, even though his stopover is only 90 mins. Now I'm already quite surprised and annoyed by this revelation as it's clearly nothing but blatant greed (like the stupid drop off charges at airports), but what makes it even worse is that in order to obtain said visa, he has to go to a biometrics validation company in South Africa to get the visa. Visa cost is £35, including validation is £50, if you want to courier it to your house instead of waiting around it's £90. For absolutely **** all.

So we cancelled his flights with BA and he's flying Egyptair and stopping over in Cairo instead, which ended up costing us even less money than the BA flights.

I just don't understand the logic of this country sometimes, the cost for a tourist visa is £lol, now you have to pay to not even step in to the country itself as you remain airside, to drop someone off at an airport is £5-£7 each time (more if you take more than a few minutes), and we wonder why our tourism is in the toilet?

Boggles my mind.
 
WTAF.

Looks like there’s two types, one for stop overs (fair enough though the cost is lol). And one for merely just getting off one plane and onto another without leaving airside - mental!
 
200sols said:
Heathrow have been saying this will slowly kill its attractiveness as a hub airport.
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There are two elements that **** me off around this, the most obvious being the sheer audacity of it, there is literally no justification apart from "because we can lol". The same as the quite frankly retarded drop off charge. For us as a family, we will not ever be flying with BA again if it involves a stopover, and I suspect Heathrow will also lose a fair whack of income once this becomes more common knowledge.

What people also fail to realise is that in order to get this absolute tosspot of a visa, you have to take a day off, go to a visa centre, pay their fees on top of the normal visa fees, and then courier to get it delivered, and then hope that it arrives on time. For us Saffricans that introduces so much uncertainty as to whether we'll get it on time or not that it's the worst option, as in this case we'll be giving that money to Egyptair and Cairo Airport instead.

If there was a justification then fair enough, but there's absolutely **** all value provided for this ridiculous charge, it's literally a fee and a month of faff and stress for nothing but greed.
 
I went to Italy last October and flew from Gatwick, Instead of going to the Long Stay car park I took a wrong turn and went towards the Drop Off lane....with no chance to turn around....I had to drive through the drop off area.

I literally spent 5 seconds in that stretch not stopping but because the camera caught me going in....I had to pay the £5 fee.
 
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Not sure exactly why you are moaning - plenty of countries have transit visas, not just the UK. Even if they are not exiting the airport, they still need to be checked if they should be allowed to get on the plane, especially if coming from a country like SA.

Submitting biometrics etc is also standard for visa applications. Yes it's all been outsourced to VFS etc so fee will have to be paid to them, or did you expect them to do it for free?

The uncertainty about getting the visa on time sounds like a problem you created yourself, by booking flights before visa is in hand. It's not hard to check visa requirements before making bookings.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I went to Italy last October and flew from Gatwich, Instead of going to the Long Stay car park I took a wrong turn and went towards the Drop Off lane....with no chance to turn around....I had to drive through the drop off area.

I literally spent 5 seconds in that stretch not stopping but because the camera caught me going in....I had to pay the £5 fee.
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Think if your pass through time is something like less than 3 minutes you're not charged. I queried it with NCP previously as I took a wrong turn to get to the hotel.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I went to Italy last October and flew from Gatwich, Instead of going to the Long Stay car park I took a wrong turn and went towards the Drop Off lane....with no chance to turn around....I had to drive through the drop off area.

I literally spent 5 seconds in that stretch not stopping but because the camera caught me going in....I had to pay the £5 fee.
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I had the same at Stansted. Emailed them to plead my case and their response was basically "tough lol pay". Here's their exact response:

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting Stansted Airport. By way of introduction, my name is Lauren and I am the case manager for your feedback submission. Should you wish to respond to this email, please ensure that you respond directly, maintaining the subject line.

We are sorry to learn that you entered the Express Set Down area at the terminal forecourt by mistake. We also apologise that we are unable to refund Express Set Down payments, please see our explanation for this below.

All details of our drop of and pick up along with options for our other parking facilities, including tariffs, maps and directions are available for drivers to view on our website when planning their journey to the airport. The signage on approach to the airport for Express Set Down is plentiful and clear. The tariffs for using the area are displayed clearly on line and within the area itself.



For the reasons given above, it is not practicable or reasonable for us to refund Express Set Down payments. Due to the large volume of traffic in and around the airport, we do have to rely on drivers to take care with their directions.



We do apologise that you may not be satisfied with the outcome of your request, but we do hope that this helps to explain our position on this matter.


Kind regards,



Lauren



Customer Feedback Team
3rd Floor, B Block
Enterprise House, Bassingbourn Road
London Stansted Airport
CM24 1QW
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A2Z said:
Not sure exactly why you are moaning - plenty of countries have transit visas, not just the UK. Even if they are not exiting the airport, they still need to be checked if they should be allowed to get on the plane, especially if coming from a country like SA.

Submitting biometrics etc is also standard for visa applications. Yes it's all been outsourced to VFS etc so fee will have to be paid to them, or did you expect them to do it for free?

The uncertainty about getting the visa on time sounds like a problem you created yourself, by booking flights before visa is in hand. It's not hard to check visa requirements before making bookings.
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Countries I've had stopovers in:

China
Australia
Kenya
Egypt
America
Belgium
Holland
Israel
Anited Arab Emirates
France

Transit visas I've needed:

0

So either this is a new thing, or you've been rather unfortunate to end up in the only countries which require it.
 
Looking in to this a bit more, it seems that if you're from a dodgy country, you need a transit visa for certain countries. The fees vary. From my very brief searc, this seems to have slowly started working its way in to our lives in 2014.

Absolutely discustard.
 
Seems like a tool to manage illegal immigration by pre screening people from high risk countries who intend to pass through the UK with aim of reducing incidence of transit passengers claiming asylum etc.

People complain about uncontrolled immigration, people complain when there is a control in place.

First world problems.

Less aircraft cluttering up UK airspace is fine with me.
 
I know of a Nigerian national who had to choose between either a direct flight London to Lagos for a mad price or less than half, get a transit visa and have a stopover of 1 hour at Schiphol (LHR to there and then Lagos).

It seems more common than I thought looking at this.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
I went to Italy last October and flew from Gatwick, Instead of going to the Long Stay car park I took a wrong turn and went towards the Drop Off lane....with no chance to turn around....I had to drive through the drop off area.

I literally spent 5 seconds in that stretch not stopping but because the camera caught me going in....I had to pay the £5 fee.
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You're lucky it wasn't London Heathrow.. I did the same and got fined £80. I drove from one side to the other without stopping.
 
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I remember when the dart charge went live, we went over the bridge and a few days later got a very polite letter in the post explaining the charge and requesting that we pay it in the next 14 days, so we did and now we know we have to pay, even if we miss the signs.

Airports on the other hand are like "AH YOU WENT WITHIN 500FT OF AN AIRPORT HERE'S A FINE LOL"

They can, with the utmost sincerity, all go **** themselves.
 
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