Don your anorak and get technical about airplanes.
#918244 by catsilversword
03 Mar 2016, 10:36
Had an email from Virgin a few days ago, so to say that anyone travelling after 1st April will need an epassport. Is this something new? I thought passports issued for some years now were epassports, and were identified by the little square-ish symbol on the bottom of the front of it, am I wrong?????
#918248 by pjh
03 Mar 2016, 10:47
Already been discussed in this thread related to ESTA.

You're correct the E-Passports have the little symbol, and for a few months now the ESTA application process has made it clear that E-Passports are required. There are, however, a potentially few people out there with non expired ESTAs based on old style machine readable passports who would be caught out by this, hence VS flagging it up.
#918277 by catsilversword
03 Mar 2016, 18:30
Many thanks! I had seen about some changes, but hadn't realised the subject had been discussed. My bad!

I was fairly sure our passports are ok, what prompted me to ask is that a friend of mine travels to the USA on 25th March and from what she says, her adult son's passport isn't biometric. As its before 1st April, then I would guess he won't have a problem (and I assume the issue doesn't apply when coming back to the UK?). They've contacted Virgin, who advised they contact the US Embassy - and they don't pick up the phone. Like a lot of people on the ESTA thread, I would have thought getting a new passport would be safest but, with only three weeks to go, timing would be another worry for my friend!

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