Many travellers to USA could be stranded from Jan 12

From January 12, European airports are gearing up for long delays for hundreds of thousands of passengers to the USA because of the new requirement to file personal particulars electronically 72 hours before flying. (video)

All the foreign passengers to the USA will from January 12, be required to provide all their personal information via Homeland Security's secured internet websites before they will be granted entry into the US via the the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, ESTA. It is available online in 16 languages. Travellers must log on here if they don't want to get blocked from their flights from January 12 (next Monday) European time: here Schiphol/Amsterdam directors in The Netherlands said they are worried about these stringent new rules, as most people, including tour operators, don't seem to be at all aware of them at the moment. People are going to arrive at airports with valid passports and valid documents, yet unless they have filed their personal information online well ahead of flying, the airlines will not be allowed to let them board. "If they haven't submitted their details electronically 72 hours before booking in, we might well have to bar a lot of people access to their booked flights, and chaos would be the result,' the official told me today. Airline companies such as KLM also expressed fears of "massive confusion and delays" about the new rules - which are not being widely published except on the US Embassy travel information websites. And travel agents also predicted major problems: "What if the passenger has submitted all the electronic information and received the travel authorisation code, and then the flight gets delayed or changed to a different destination for some reason? The electronic records for such passengers would not match the information of the flights as they had occurred. Would such discrepancies also mean that they would not be allowed into the USA?" was one of the questions by a Dutch travel agent, who said he dealt with many older travel groups whose members would have difficulty filing applications online. The US authorities meanwhile have already announced that they will maintain stringent controls - anyone not keeping to these rules will not be allowed into the USA. A great deal of irritation already exists amongst tourist organisations dealing with USA flights: arrival tourists often face a barrage of rude controls which include body searches and extremely discourteous, heavily-armed officials. The Dutch airline KLM advises passengers to submit all their applications at least 72 hours ahead of their departure and most other airlines such as Lufthansa in Germany are telling tour operators the same thing. The questions online are very similar to the green I-94W forms which were filled in by passengers enroute to the USA on the planes. They are filed on a secured electronic system so that the personal information cannot be accessed by anyone outside the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs officials at the airports, the US authorities said. The countries for which the new rules will be applied are all the Balkan countries, Andora, Australia, Austria, Monaco, Belgium, Lichtenstein, New Zealand, Brunei, Noorway, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, San Marino, France, Singapore, Germany, Slovenia, Iceland, Spain, Ireland Sweden, Italy, Switserland, Japan and the United Kingdom. File the travel application here