British Airways to require photo ID for domestic flights from 1st September

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• Trevor says:

  25 Aug25 August 15:45

  Although Easyjet may require ID in their T&Cs, in practice it is never checked on the Belfast – GB routes except for a rare time with people who have checked baggage. My wallet has never come out of my pocket on the last 10 times i have made those journeys and likewise on the GB – Belfast legs. All this policy will do is deny a travel option to my mother and brother who have neither passports nor driving licences.

  • ADS says:

    25 Aug25 August 17:39

    A couple of years ago our flight from BFS to BHX had a group of non UK/IE passport holders – and they had their passports checked thoroughly.

    And then the rest of us flashed our UK/IE passports as well !

  • Matty says:

    26 Aug26 August 07:57

    I agree. easyJet hasn’t checked my ID since before the pandemic, which is about as far back as I can remember. I had an odd look, during the pandemic, when I was waving it around before the gate staff. They still didn’t check it.

• pigeon says:

  25 Aug25 August 15:53

  Sounds like revenue protection to me – maybe some consultants came in and said you’re losing X million on EDI-LCY from work colleagues pooling cheap advance-purchase tickets.

  • ADS says:

    25 Aug25 August 17:42

    I’d love to see the Cost Benefit Analysis calculation

    Cost: how much staff time / missed departure slots
    Benefit: gained revenue from people no longer (theoretically) able to resell tickets

  • SBIre says:

    26 Aug26 August 13:46

    I think you are 100% right, having flown that rote very many times!

• redlilly says:

  25 Aug25 August 15:55

  Perhaps it has something to do with the proposed visa controls for travellers between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the run up to the introduction of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme.

  The new controls apply to people without British or Irish nationality crossing the border, including those with legal residency on the island of Ireland.

  There may be quite a few more knowledgeable people on here, but I understand that Ireland is also looking at introducing its own ETA scheme, in response and as Ireland is not in the Schengen zone. BA can’t be seen to be treating individuals in the UK/Great Britain differently right?! Just some blue sky thinking… otherwise it is a bit maddening.

  I was surprised last week flying in to Dublin that I did have to show my passport. Luckily I did remember to bring it, but also have the Irish passport card, which would have saved me either way.

  • martin says:

    25 Aug25 August 16:15

    As a British or Irish citizen, you don’t need to show your passport when flying to Ireland, but do need to demonstrate your citizenship. The easiest way to do so is to show your passport. (Definitely my favourite bit of bureaucracy.)

    • Brian P says:

      26 Aug26 August 11:01

      Driving licences work BUT only if you were born in the UK or Ireland..

  • ADS says:

    25 Aug25 August 17:13

    whereas when you arrive by ferry into Dublin there often aren’t any checks at all !

    • Ironside says:

      25 Aug25 August 17:27

      First time I went to Dublin via ferry in the late 1990s, having not even considered taking a passport, I distinctly remember a fella stopping us.
      “Passport control, lads. Are you British?”
      “Err, yes,” we replied nervously.
      “Ah, grand,” he said, and waved us through.
      Loved it!

      • ADS says:

        25 Aug25 August 17:46

        on the occasions that they do check passports … i’m sure they can guess 99% of people’s nationality a mile off !

        • John says:

          26 Aug26 August 08:18

          Yup, no white people get checked

    • Malibu69 says:

      26 Aug26 August 05:35

      They did have passport control checks on the U.K. ferry into Dublin port two weeks ago. There never even used to be an immigration desk there while now there is one and it’s manned during times when ferry docks

  • Paul says:

    25 Aug25 August 22:38

    ETIAS will not apply for travel between GB and Ireland as the common travel area applies. Ireland is not in Schengen and is unlikely to join Schengen until Ireland is again unified. For the time being it is likely that ETIAS will only apply to Schengen member states.

    • redlilly says:

      26 Aug26 August 16:44

      I was talking about ETAs, which are the UK version of the ETIA (the european travel visa)… and yes the ETA will apply to people travelling between Ireland and UK who do not have a right to reside in either country. No doubt one of the reasons why they’re being introduced.

• AL says:

  25 Aug25 August 15:55

  Is this driven by a push to improve the accuracy and efficiency of biometric boarding processes? I regularly fly BA domestic and can’t think when I was last asked for my ID… but if they can get ID and match it to faces (or whatever they store), then they can improve how efficient biometric boarding is.

• Froggee says:

  25 Aug25 August 16:10

  Weird.

  Some time ago I remember checking in en famille at Heathrow for a flight up to Edinburgh. The agent asked me and Mrs Froggee for photo ID. We handed it over and I innocently asked if BA now required photo ID for domestic flights. At this point the agent became very surly and said “it is highly recommended”. I obviously pushed things too far by commenting that I would like to know if it was required as I didn’t normally carry photo ID with me. “It is highly recommended”. So if I don’t have photo ID would I not be allowed to fly? “It is highly recommended”.

  The guy was downright hostile by this point so I gave up.

  My best guess is this check in agent has now made management and in time will introduce a policy that ally customers need both sets of grandparents in attendance to vouch for their good character before being allowed to fly.

  • martin says:

    25 Aug25 August 16:17

    was he trained by the same person who trained the check-in agent at T5 for our last GLA flight, who insisted on seeing passports for our children at bag drop until a supervisor told her otherwise?

  • CamFlyer says:

    25 Aug25 August 16:24

    I seem to recall that some bit of British bureaucracy did in fact require my grandparents’ birth and marriage dates. From memory it was my first passport application after becoming a British national. I was wondering if they might revoke my naturalisation if they couldn’t verify my grandparents’ marriage….

    • martin says:

      25 Aug25 August 16:27

      From 1983, people born in the UK weren’t British citizens by default – it depended on their parents’ nationality (and if they weren’t both British, whether they were married). It meant that I had to provide grandparents’ details when applying for my kids’ British passports.

      • John says:

        26 Aug26 August 08:23

        If you are naturalised then your grandparents’ status is irrelevant. I didn’t include any of this information.

      • Brian P says:

        26 Aug26 August 11:03

        Depends on the parents immigration status rather than their nationality…

• Physci says:

  25 Aug25 August 16:18

  The list of IDs is not definitive as it says “examples include” so other forms of photographic ID may be accepted – can see the potential for disputes at the gate …

• Duck Ling says:

  25 Aug25 August 16:21

  I have always wondered what is stopping a Gold Card holder booking Joe Bloggs a seat say LHR – MAN in the GCH name and Joe Bloggs using First Wing, First Lounge etc and GCH getting the TP’s and Avios. I guess the answer is – nothing.

  The same exists when travelling domestically within Australia which I do so on Qantas quite regularly – there is no point where the airline verifies that the person travelling is the person named on the ticket.

  Funny enough I know this says the policy is starting 1/9 but last weekend when I was flying MAN-LHR I was one of those annoying people that got to the gate control and faffed around to find my passport when I was asked for photo ID which was unexpected.

• NFH says:

  25 Aug25 August 16:56

  It’s terrible that British Airways can’t spell licence. Rob, you should append “[sic]” to indicate that you have deliberately copied the exact text including this spelling mistake. BA should know that, just like advice/advise and practice/practise, the noun is licence and the verb is license. Doesn’t anyone at BA proof-read this stuff before it’s published?

  • AL says:

    25 Aug25 August 17:16

    BA’s track record for thinking about things isn’t brilliant… I’m going to suggest that proofreading is down the bottom of that list!

  • RussellH says:

    26 Aug26 August 10:40

    My primary school teachers would have been all over that spelling error – for some reason it really, really annoyed them.
    I would assume that whoever wrote that just had their spill chucker set to US English rather than UK English, and when challenged, responded that “the spelling checked OK”.

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