Brexit related disruption to air travel ex UK from November 1st
 

This may be a silly question, but does anyone know what - if any - arrangements are in place to ensure air travel ex UK continues as normal after the 31st October Brexit deadline? Hoping to travel subload ex UK to Europe or DXB on November 2nd..............have UK airline employees been given any reassurances, advice or been advised of any contingency plans? Really don't want to be marooned in Blighty!
Thanks!
7B

Not sure airlines themselves are in a position to give assurances/guarantees, if we ask we get referred to UK Government sources such as the one here:


https://www.gov.uk/guidance/air-serv...l#introduction


My guess can't see any obvious reason why LHR-DXB nonstop should be a problem...anything into Europe might IMHO get a bit more complex ..looks like flights will operate but I guess there's an off chance it might start to get messy if flights/pax/crew start to get tangled up with customs/immigration associated delays and that in turn starts to have knock on effects on schedules.

The only thing the UK will get is CTOT's but that is no different to any other day. Planes will be flying so don't worry. But then again, my November roster hasn't been published for some reason? :ooh:

In all fairness I don't expect any noticeable change at UK airports. The UK is not a part of the Schengen zone, so there is already passport control on entry even from the EU, Brexit will not change any of this. Customs is self-declaration by chosing the appropriate channel, and EU/non-EU traffic is already mixed at the baggage halls, so again no change (only the blue corridor sign needs to be changed to green). The only possible hickup could be if the UK would decide to no longer to accept EU ID cards for travel (and many people traveling in EU do not have valid passports), but that likely would have UK citizens end up in the 'others' queue at all EU airports...

On departure there is neither customs nor passport control out of the UK, so again no impact whatsoever.

The whole surrunding hype feels a bit like Y2K with predictions of aircraft faling out of the sky at midnight...

Comparing it to Y2K is not valid - the reason there weren't major issues was because companies spent years preparing for it. Perhaps planes wouldn't have fallen out of the sky but I worked on a number of systems that definitely would have stopped working without this investment.

Doesn't look to me like the same preparation has been done for Brexit - let's hope it didn't need to be.

I know a lot of IT professionals who were around 20 years ago are sick to the back teeth with the false comparison being made between Brexit and Y2K...I have to second vancouv's comment.

I don't think the issue is UK airports, and their inbound passport control ( as you rightly point out the UK has always had Border checks. :oh: ) and customs arrangements....the vaguely possible problem is reactionary delays due to issues and checks at the EU27 end.

I made a decent amount of money out of Y2K investments (IT related).
No idea of how to do that in relation to Brexit.

It's sad that the public perception of Y2K is that it was a big fuss about nothing. The reality is a hell of a lot of time and money was spent behind the scenes making damn sure that nothing happened, but of course that's not what the public sees.

It is the same for a lot of things in IT though, whilst everything is working, the assumption (by the public and also managers) is that the IT staff aren't doing anything. Like the proverbial swan, nobody sees the frantic paddling required to keep the visible bits floating serenely by...

Agree about Y2K … an awful lot of work went into ensuring 'nothing' happened.

Recent experience as non-EU passport holders travelling from the UK to Europe, even with a 'smart' passport:
* the EU passport holders cleared passport control fairly quickly
* us 'foreigners' took much (much) longer - even though there were many fewer of us to start with
* the luggage carousal had stopped(!) by the time we got there (can't recall that ever happening before) - and there were still several people in the queue behind us

If UK passport holders are treated the same post 31 October, you may need to factor extra time (20 minutes?) to clear passport control on arrival.

On departure, the number of booths servicing non-EU passport holders seemed to be fewer and were manually processed (at least I received a stamp!)

regards
layman

If there is a deal, it may well be that UK passport holders will still be allowed through the EU lines and vice versa. Is it not the case that certain non EU countries already have that privilege too? (I don't know because I've never looked closely - but I seem to remember seeing some non-EU countries included in the EU lanes).

Further to my above post; indeed exceptions already exist for Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein. I am hopeful that GB will be added to that!

While a lot of money and effort may have been spent on Y2K, I would say most of it was wasted. In my case, I was responsible for Unix based communications systems support in Europe, Africa and Middle East and was roped in to sit on a special Y2K global team operating in UK, USA and Australia. I grew tired of listening to the pontificating waffle on so many conference calls and decided to "try it out". My team had radio systems at our office in the UK mimicking our customers' systems and we could configure them to replicate customers' systems anywhere to work out unexpected snags etc. So, I set up one of the systems and told it lies about the date, telling the system it was already Dec 31st 1999. Then I watched and logged the dreaded roll over to 2000. And sod all happened! I was frequently kicked (metaphorically) at various conference calls for my reports and opinions etc. One senior manager was heard boasting how he was going to "have me". When the dreaded date came around, we had parties of various managers etc sat in our offices here in the UK, Chicago, Sydney and at a customer's location in Saudi Arabia. And as midnight reached and passed each location, starting with Sydney people reported in on events, or more accurately, non-event. When midnight passed here in the UK, my bosses boss went through the corporate back slapping routine (as though he had done something!), then took me to one side and said "Well it looks as if you were right after all".
Much ado about nothing!

:offtopic:

I was one of those IT professionals, and the only one who dared to speak up to the board that nothing will happen (all the critical systems were SITA hosted, who of course did their own audit) to no avail. In the end, one of the big five was hired to do an audit that $250k later said the same thing... :ugh:

Getting back to the original topic, one thing will happen though. We will be able to get booze duty free again :)

Looks like another postponement, as per the new law.

Whenever it happens, no one will know anything!

Further thread drift (sorry S.o.S.) I was on the Y2K team for a Germany Mobile phone company, part owned by a well known UK mobile phone company at the time. We found that the main customer database system, that was respobsible for signing up new customers, managing and signing out customers - failed on the 29th Feb 2000. The mgmt INSISTED that this was NOT a Y2K failure as it was the February date :ugh: We said, "Whatevvah - but you'd better fix it." They did. We found some minor systems too but the big one would have brought the whole company to a grindding halt, being unable to sign any new customers or manage any customers until it weas fixed. The repairs and testing took about two weeks.

Y2K was real and it got fixed.

Don't be so sure, I think it was the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport who quoted the new Chancellor as saying there will no change to limits of excise goods being brought in for personal consumption after Brexit. Whether that turns out to be the case who know. Probably best ask Mr. Blobby!

Also, Duty Free is a con, generally prices in European shops for beer and wine are much lower than duty free. Although I know it's not "Duty Free" even though the sign above shop infers otherwise, the shop at the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone charges above the high street price in Europe for perfumes, and on the French side, tobacco and alcohol are more expensive than can be found for the same products in France and Belgium.

Short term is probably OK, although make sure your passport has at least six months validity.

Long term???
BBC. Aerospace industry seeks Brexit reassurance

Is there much point? Sainsbury's are selling a litre of Bailey's for £12. Can that be beaten anywhere else?

Agreed...Certainly some the "Duty Free" prices I've seen at one LHR terminal can often be beaten in the nearby supermarkets.

Let's face it - non-Schengen flights to/from the UK have always been a bit of a lottery when you dept/arrive in Europe

just recently I was leaving a medium sized Italian Airport for the UK and they had 2 officers on departure passport control and the processing time was horrendous - but coming back a few days later they had 8 officers on and it was a breeze coming in

I suspect that there will be no pressure at all to swiftly process arrivals departures to to the UK - ie it will not get any better than it is today - and it may get a lot worse. Any problems elsewhere will be solved by moving staff & resources away from the ungrateful Brits to the people they care about... after all who will they complain to ? the European Commission???

What will happen to delay compensation ex-EU airports after Brexit?