Harrowing experience with Pending UK ETA at Stansted airport
TLDR: Moral of the story is that even though most people get their UK ETA in seconds, consequences are BAD if you don’t get it in time by your arrival. And if it’s pending, either don’t board the flight or wait at arrivals until it’s confirmed and then go to border control. And approval delays are 100% possible, so would recommend applying with multiple business days to spare.
And I’m also looking for some advice from any compensation experts for whether there’s something i could apply for here.
Story:
I was flying from Vienna to London Stansted (US Citizen) and realized during checkin the day before that the UK now has an ETA requirement so I applied. I have visited the UK many times before so I didn’t think that this time entry requirements might be different, which is on me. I used the official website because the app kept crashing the day i was applying. Unfortunately, i didn’t get any immediate approval email which was mildly concerning given that online it seemed like most people get it quickly. On the Ryanair app it said they’ll manually check my ETA at the counter. So next morning in Vienna airport i asked at checkin whether my ETA was valid if i hadn’t received confirmation yet. They took my passport number and ETA application confirmation number and put it in some system idk what, and told me i was good to fly. I double checked with them whether it would be fine for me to show up at the UK border without the confirmation email and again they said we’ve confirmed on our end and you should be good. So i assumed that meant my ETA was good in the system and they just hadn’t gotten around to sending me the approval email yet (i had noticed some people have that story online)
Flew to London and reached the immigration counter and they said my passport required further assistance at the egate. When i got to a human, they told me that i was currently in the UK illegally and they started taking my dietary preferences and medical conditions and proceeded to put me in a windowless detention room for 7 hours with basically no device access except a few calls and messages every few hours. To pass time, i mostly folded origami and tried to write random lists of various places I’ve been lol. They did give me some lunch and because they’re British, brought me tea multiple times which was at least something. During this whole process my ETA was actually approved (i saw it during one of the few phone breaks) which meant i had around a 24 hour turnaround for the application, not a few minutes as is the common experience online. I think the reason mine was flagged and slower is that i used to work in London long ago and so they always seem to get confused every subsequent time i come in as a tourist.
Anyway i told the border agents my ETA had been approved but according to them, because i originally arrived without an ETA, my arrival was still illegal and i needed to fly back to Vienna. I’m not sure i fully understood this since i thought the area before border control still counts as international land so it seems like an arrival into country never successfully happened? Anyway i even tried asking if i could fly somewhere closer in EU, but they would only let me go back to Vienna and booked the next flight out without letting me check the price or anything. I had to be escorted by 2 border agents to the gate and they put my passport in an envelope and gave it to the pilot on the flight back to Vienna so i could only get my passport back after landing in Vienna.
Anyway now i guess i need to book a hotel in Vienna for the night and fly back to the UK tmrw, it’s all gonna rack up be a pretty hefty bill at this point. I get that the UK Gov website does say to apply 1-3 business days in advance but im annoyed by the fact that mine just randomly happened to take so much longer while my mom applied next to me and got it in 1 minute. And then this insane rule abt needing to have it before landing when i know for a fact from many Reddit stories that many people apply for their UK ETA after landing so it’s not exactly a logical or consistent rule. The border agents told me Im in an unlucky situation due to the ETA rules only now starting to be enforced like this without the airlines catching up.
Anyone see any opportunity for any type compensation anywhere? Maybe with Ryanair although not really sure since they could probably claim the responsibility falls on me. Otherwise yeah it’s like $1000 down the drain and like 1.5 days lost for me which sucks… and just a very intense experience all around. Interestingly, the border agents told me that the UK government is fining airlines 8k pounds right now for any passenger that comes to the UK without a valid eta so that’s too bad for Ryanair i guess. Lmk if anyone has any advice that isn’t scolding me for not realizing abt the ETA sooner.