Per Home office UK Border Agency web site:
Advance information on passengers
Before you travel to the UK
This page explains why we collect information about passengers before their journey and how it may affect you when you travel to and from the United Kingdom.
We are modernising our border control by introducing electronic collection of information on passengers, services, and crew provided by air, sea and rail carriers for all journeys to or from the United Kingdom. It will allow us to identify people who are a potential risk before they travel and to alert the relevant authorities.
The carrier will be legally required to collect this information and provide it to us as part of the check-in process. Passengers who do not give the information to the carrier are unlikely to be allowed to travel.
Our electronic system has already allowed us to check more than 80 million journeys made by passengers before they travelled. This has resulted in more than 2,800 arrests.
Our name for this programme of modernisation is e-Borders. See e-Borders for more information about the programme and when it will come into effect.
At the moment, owners and operators of fishing boats and pleasure craft (for example yachts) and light aircraft do not have to provide this information, but we expect to start activating a trial programme with them in 2010. For more information about this, and details of the requirements that carriers will need to meet, see e-Borders requirements for carriers and ports.
We will activate e-Borders in stages, to allow time for us to set up the necessary systems for transferring information between the government agencies involved and the vast number of carriers, transport operators, port authorities and individuals. Those who will be affected can be large organisations such as scheduled and charter airlines, ferry and cruise ships, and through-tunnel rail operators. They can also be small or independent carriers for example fishing boats, working shipping vessels, business and cargo charter flights and the individual leisure yachting and private aircraft pilots.
You can find the specific e-Borders requirements for these groups in e-Borders requirements for carriers and ports.
The timetable is:
* 2009: the e-Borders operations centre, the National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC) starts operating, enabling us to create travel histories for passengers;
* December 2009: e-Borders aims to collect details of 60% of all international passengers and crews from a range of carriers and to check that 60% against lists of people who are of interest to authorities;
* December 2010: e-Borders aims to collect details of 95% of passengers and crews;
* April 2011: we start to activate modernised entry methods at our ports;
* July 2012: improvements including an ability to give clearance to passengers who are already on a train;
* March 2014: e-Borders is fully operational, covering all international travellers using all our ports, including matching passengers' arrivals to their departures.
Some airlines are already collecting the information.