Going to the UK? You Probably Need an 'Electronic Travel Authorisation'

The need for a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) kind of sneaked up on us, and perhaps it could sneak up on you too.

We'd known for some time that the UK was implementing an ETA in 2025. We've been applying for Australia's ETA annually for many years, so we're familiar with the concept. As it happens, we're flying through London (LHR) en route to Rome on British Airways in mid-January, and BA hasn't mentioned to us that we'll need one. [Update: BA informed us of this requirement via email as we were writing this.]

Our oldest grandchild is also flying to London in January on Canada's WestJet, and he hasn't heard anything from them either.

Still, it's up to passengers to check travel requirements at their destinations for themselves. We'll use the IATA Travel Centre if we're flying to an "exotic" destination," but we've never experienced complications on our many flights into - and through - the UK since our first flights there in 1967 (Kathy) and 1982 (Kathy, Brian, and our three children).

From January 8 2025 onward, all non-European travelers landing in or transiting through the UK must obtain an ETA in advance of their flight. Citizens of European countries will be required to obtain an ETA for travel from April 2025 onward.

You can fill out your application using an app or online. We found the app to be reasonably convenient, albeit with a couple of minor wrinkles. It took Brian several tries to take his head and shoulders selfie, while Kathy succeeded immediately. Neither of us could use our iPhones to scan the chip imbedded in the passport cover. We read several negative reviews complaining of the same problem. The solution is to click on "next." The following screen allows you instead of scanning simply to confirm the numbers on your passport. Easy-Peasy!

Finally, and this is a personal beef, the UK government required us to pay the 10-pound fee in US dollars, and the exchange rate (USD $13.05) provides a good example of that legal scam we often highlight for other travelers, Dynamic Currency Conversion. Paying in USD would have cost around $12.40. It's not the principal, it's the principle! We politely suggested in the feedback section that customers should, at the least, have a choice of paying in their home currency converted by their credit card provider.

The ETA is good for two years (Australia's is good only for one) or until your passport expires. Brian's expires in January 2026 and Kathy's in July 2026, but the amount is sufficiently modest that we're not too worried about that shortened duration. 

Brian had committed an act of stupidity several months ago when completing his Australian ETA, so he was especially careful. He received an email almost immediately confirming that his ETA had been approved, while Kathy's arrived overnight. 

If you're traveling to or through the UK anytime soon, you might want to obtain your ETA sooner rather than later.

As we start to think seriously about our trip to Italy in a little less than three weeks from now, we look back at our 2024 travel year with happy memories. 

We flew to Larnaca Cyprus early in January on BA. Later that month we flew to Fort Myers Florida on Alaska.

We flew to Cancun on Alaska in mid-February. At the end of February we flew to Budapest out of Vancouver on BA.

In March we flew to Frankfurt on Condor with our youngest grandchild, for his "Grand Tour" of Europe. We've now taken all eight of them to Europe.

In mid-April we flew to Lima Peru on Alaska and American.

In May we flew to Cairns Australia via Fiji and Sydney on a combination of Alaska, Fiji Airways, and Qantas. That was our 18th trip to Australia since our first visit there in 2007, and our 16th time attending Oz Fest, a "Do" or get-together organized by members of FlyerTalk.

In July and August we largely enjoyed ourselves at home, with the exception of a quick trip to southern Colorado via Albuquerque.

In September we hosted Bill and Sue, two Australian Flyertalk friends we met at our first Oz Fest in Melbourne in 2007.

In mid-October we sailed on a five-night Princess cruise from Vancouver to Seattle, a bargain we couldn't pass up, flying back from Los Angeles on Alaska to pick up our car.

The grande finale of the year encompassed all of November. It included a family wedding in Houston, a cruise on Portugal's Douro River, and a transatlantic cruise in the company of Kathy's two brothers and a sister-in-law. Also on the ship (and on our Trivia team!) were Bud and Jessie, good cruising friends of many years from Toronto.

In summary, Alaska records that we flew 122,358 paid miles on them and their partners in 2024. If we add on our return award flights to Australia, another 15,000 miles or so, and one or two other flights on different alliances - Lufthansa comes to mind - it's safe to estimate we flew about 140,000 miles in 2024.

We sailed a total of 22 nights on three cruises, and TripIt records us as visiting 72 cities and 19 countries/regions. By most standards (those of some of our travel friends aside), we traveled a lot. The best part of our travels, however, consists of the people - the family and friends we traveled with, and the lovely individuals we met along the way. 

We wish you a Happy New Year. We hope 2025 includes wonderful travel experiences for us all.

Status Matching Alaska Elite to Hawaiian? It's Now Open and Encouraged, but Beware

If you're an Alaska Airlines flyer, you already know that Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines are merging. Airline mergers are usually, well, interesting.

After speculation on a FlyerTalk thread and elsewhere, Gary Leff of View From The Wing was probably the first travel blogger to announce that Alaska has just set up a status match to Hawaiian Airlines link for elite members on its website, to be found here. 

To complete a status match, you need to possess elite status on Alaska as well as open a mileage account on Hawaiian, if you don't already have one.

We have both and have already completed our status match. There is a lot of confusion (check out that FlyerTalk thread), and on Facebook Alaska Airlines groups there are some downright angry customers venting about their negative experiences.

Apparently some Alaska elites have bought flights to Hawaii on Alaska, and Alaska has moved their flights to Hawaiian planes as they consolidate some schedules. Another travel blogger, the Cranky Flier, has documented some of the early switches of AS to HA "metal."

What disgruntled Alaska elites claim to be discovering is that on flights switched from AS to HA metal by Alaska, or on Hawaiian flights they themselves have booked on the Alaska website, the elite members are losing such benefits as free checked luggage and preferred seating. We've also read that Hawaiian Pualani Platinum and Gold elite members get Hawaiian lounge access, while Alaska elites, even those with Alaska Lounge memberships, do not.  

Never stand between a politician and a microphone, and never stand between an elite flyer and his or her benefits!

We've been around long enough to see more than one airline merger, and to live with the negative (for us) consequences of one, the United - Continental merger. This merger is particularly complicated because Alaska intends to merge a lot of the operations, including the mileage programs, while maintaining the two separate brands. 

We now have matched status with Hawaiian, as encouraged and facilitated by Alaska. If by any chance we want to fly, say, to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines, we will most definitely buy the flight on the Hawaiian website and use our HA mileage plan number.  

If you happen to be an Alaska elite Mileage Plan member, you'll want to check this out for yourself, proceed with caution, and remember the old saying: the Devil is in the details.

Another Year of Travel Riches and Glitches

 

As 2024 winds to a close, we’d like to enthusiastically welcome several new subscribers to our readership. We promise not to overburden your inbox, and rest assured that any links we include do not include a commission for us.

Furthermore, we don’t consider ourselves travel “experts,” even if some of our friends and family do, but we enjoy the luxury of having the time to complete a fair amount of research when planning trips. We also know some real travel experts, and learn from them.

We still learn something almost every time we travel, and we continue to make the odd mistake that keeps us from ever feeling smug about our expertise.

Just this morning, for example, we were notified through our Expert Flyer paid subscription that there was a First Class upgrade available on our March SEA-PHL flight on Alaska. For some reason, probably unused credits in our Alaska accounts, we had bought two separate tickets and this complicated matters.

When the Alaska phone agent we reached pulled a First Class upgrade for Kathy, the other two available First Class upgrades disappeared, an interesting glitch in Alaska’s less-than-stellar IT mechanism.  The friendly and diligent agent (typical of our dealings with AS reps) was aware of the problem but had to sort it out with a supervisor.

She appears to have been successful, but we’ll now think twice before buying separate tickets for any future flights. As a matter of fact, Alaska flyers traveling as couples should decide whether or not to split their itineraries, because AS tends to release upgrades one seat at a time, and an itinerary with two will be skipped over for a single traveler lower on the upgrade list. This subject has received a lot of discussion on FlyerTalk.

We've decided we'd rather fly together in Premium Class, where we're automatically seated due to status, than separately (or only one of us) in F. That's a YMMV situation (Your mileage may vary), and worth considering for couples. Flights have been generally full in 2024, and even as exalted MVP Gold 100Ks, we've been upgraded surprisingly few times. Premium Economy is quite pleasant though.

We tend our itineraries much the same way we tend our garden. We check the details regularly, not just hoping to spot a drop in a fare or a hotel rate, but even schedule changes. Yes, we’ve spotted flight changes that the airline never bothered to share with us.

We try to look at the challenges as part of the fun of travel. We admit that some are more fun than others.

Just the other day our son, about to fly home from  Barcelona to Seattle via London Heathrow after a quick work trip, was notified by British Airways that his flight the next day had been cancelled and rebooked for the following day.

He called BA and quickly learned that it was his first flight out of Barcelona that had been cancelled. The agent promptly rebooked him on a flight leaving three hours earlier, a simple solution apparently beyond the capabilities of BA's automated system. He didn’t even have to use that well known HUACA strategy: Hang up and call again.

We’ve easily managed to requalify for Alaska’s top tier again, and AS has added an interesting wrinkle to its frequent flyer program. Starting in 2025, miles flown on award flights will be counted as Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) for status. This means our May 2025 award flight to Australia via Fiji on Fiji Airways (SFO-NAN-MEL-NAN-SFO) will add over 15,000 miles to our qualifying miles. Now that’s a true enhancement (frequent flyers have learned to dread an airline announcing an "enhancement") that will keep us in the game a little longer.

The next couple of days will find us hosting 15 at our house - children and their significant others, and our grandchildren. We’ve taken all eight of our grandchildren on their own trip to Europe over the past decade, starting with the oldest a decade ago in 2014, and the youngest this past March. The oldest is now returning to Europe on his own trip early in 2025, and we’ll be quite happy if we’ve passed the travel bug along to all of them.We may even talk a little travel during our time together.

We already have trips planned for Italy in January and Czechia and Austria in February. If we spot anything interesting in Google Flight Search or elsewhere, we’ll be sure to pass it along. In the meantime, we wish our readers and fellow travelers a joyful holiday.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

 

 

Especially for Seniors: Some Nuts and Bolts of Travel

We two intrepid travelers are still coming to grips with the fact that we’re senior citizens. Some days we still catch ourselves wondering what we're going to do when we grow up. Every so often, a kind fellow traveler reminds us of our advancing years by offering to help us stow our rollaboards in the overhead compartment. Occasionally we even accept.

We first need to remind ourselves of all of the advantages we traveling geezers enjoy.

First, we can total up our travel budget without feeling guilty about spending money that should be reserved for our children’s food, clothes, or education. Our three middle-aged children and their spouses are all productively employed college graduates and are supporting themselves quite nicely. Our only self-imposed rule is that travel funds, like other niceties, come out of income and never out of principal, i.e. we're not spending our kids' inheritance. We hunt for bargains and the vast majority of our trips are based on some kind of deal.

Speaking of family, we’re able to use our airline “points” (air miles) to provide flights to family and friends, and have similarly booked hotels over the years. We’ve also experienced the incomparable joy of taking all eight of our grandchildren on their own first trips to Europe.

Second, we can book trips without any reference to job schedules and vacation time, having been gainfully unemployed for more than 20 years at this point. We tend to stay home from June to October, when Northwest  coastal weather is at its best, and when we can enjoy our garden and the immediate area. When our hometown climate is at its darkest and wettest (from November to the beginning of March), we’re off seeing the world.

Third, after visiting more than 80 foreign countries, as well as most American states and Canadian provinces, we don’t feel we have to live up to anyone else’s expectations of what or where constitutes a worthwhile travel experience.  If we skip a museum visit in favor of a long and leisurely lunch, that’s our choice to make. It’s between us and our waistlines. We recently wrote about the art of leisurely senior travel here.

Finally, there are very occasionally discounts at attractions for senior citizens, although those are commonly reserved for local residents. We did score a magnificent discount in 2013 to visit Hong Kong Disneyland, paying not much more than ten bucks each for a day pass.

As to the factors we keep in mind…

We simply don’t have as much energy as we did in our early travel days, when we would fly in United’s economy class between, say, San Francisco and Hong Kong (SFO-HKG) earning a bunch of cheap miles. Hey, those BIS (Butt in Seat) miles are what made us UA “Million Mile Flyers” in less than a decade of serious post-retirement flying. 

The days of flying in economy over the water are now behind us. We did manage a daytime FRA-SEA (Frankfurt to Seattle) flight in Condor’s Premium Economy as recently as this past March with grandson Jace, but that’s our absolute  limit. Otherwise it’s lie-flat or no-go for us. We suffer from jet lag even when we stay home, and we're not going to add to it by sitting up overnight in a cramped airplane seat for 10-14 hours. 

We will also include a hotel night layover to our itineraries rather than flying and connecting all the way to our destination when it’s practical. For example, we’ve been known to overnight in SEA (Seattle) and fly onward to BLI (Bellingham) the following morning, rather than take the flight that lands at Midnight after 10-12 hours flying back from Europe.

Travel by public transit has pluses and minuses. We ourselves more and more utilize rideshares such as Uber, Lyft, or Bolt to travel between airport and city, or even around a city, as opposed to navigating the local bus system. We still travel by subway in cities that have them. 

We hate to admit it, but geezers like us are potential targets for thieves. For example, Brian was pickpocketed on the Paris Metro a few years ago, and earlier this year we were both hoodwinked by a young woman who showed us the way to an elevator at our Rome subway stop, managing to pull Kathy's wallet out of her bag without our noticing. Brian now utilizes a dummy wallet (he was actually using one in Paris but made the mistake of stashing an ATM withdrawal in it temporarily) and he now wears pants with secret inside zipper pockets made by an outfit called Clothing Arts.

We've always enjoyed planning trips, but we now plan them meticulously, documenting every detail on our invaluable TripIt app (we enjoy the extra features of the paid version). We research in advance how we're going to travel from Point A to Point B, an airport or train station to our hotel. If it's an airport hotel with a shuttle, we'll call the hotel in advance to request details of where we find the shuttle, its hours of operation, and whether or not we need to call the hotel for a pickup. We document virtually everything, including prices, on TripIt. We also carry paperwork with us, rather than simply relying on what's stored on our phones.  

While getting there is not always half the fun, it's a necessary part of the travel experience and we do everything we reasonably can to smooth out the bumps on the journey.  

A Few More Nuts and Bolts

We limit our luggage to a rollaboard and a smaller bag that attaches to the handle and sits on top. It's within legal carryon luggage limits for US airlines and we haven't experienced any recent problems boarding foreign carriers that sometimes enforce weight limits. Some folks find backpacks even handier, but we'll stick with our spinner rollaboards. We buy cheap ones at Costco, e.g. Ricardo of Beverly Hills. Furthermore, we "test drive" them in the store's aisle, making sure the four wheels track on a straight path, rather than curving one way or the other (we've learned through experience that's worth checking). We carry electronics, liquids, and meds in the small bags, making for easier access when needed at airport security checkpoints or elsewhere.

Our U.S. T-Mobile Cellular senior plan enables us to make phone calls and to access data in most countries in the world for US $80 monthly (for two lines). The price has increased since we signed up, but it's still an excellent deal. We can also access WiFi for free aboard Alaska, American, Delta, and United Airlines. This phone plan has literally changed our travel lives.

T-Mobile charges us 25 cents a minute for foreign phone calls, but we load a few dollars on the Skype app and make most of our foreign calls through the app for an average cost of 2 cents a minute.

We find that foreign guides and taxi drivers use WhatsApp, owned by Meta, for communicating so we reluctantly keep that on our phones. We ourselves prefer the Signal App. As PC Magazine put it in a recent review, "Signal has no incentive to sell your data... Competitor WhatsApp is also free but tied to Meta's data-mining empire."

We carry a variety of  Visa, MasterCard, and AMEX credit cards that have no foreign exchange fees.

We carry bank ATM cards that minimize or even eliminate withdrawal fees on the ATMS of domestic and foreign banks.

We always seek out actual bank ATMs, and avoid such ATMs as Euronet and Travelex, which offer terrible exchange rates.

No!

We always complete credit card and ATM transactions in the local currency, and decline the invitation to make the transaction in US dollars. If you have doubts, just read up on the Dynamic Currency Conversion scam. 

Credit cards have become even more widely accepted post-pandemic, and the exchange rates are ordinarily good - sometimes better than ATM cash - so we use them freely. Our cards generally offer instant email confirmation of transactions, a useful safeguard.

We keep a separate record of our plastic cards and know exactly what our wallets contain, just in case we lose them.

We also keep photos of our main passport pages and of our rollaboards in our cell phones, so we can show them at a consulate or the lost baggage counter.

Our great clarinet teacher, Mitchell Lurie, used to say "When I perform, everything leaves me but my preparation." Likewise, our travel preparations support us through our trips, while allowing us room to improvise when needed as we enjoy each day to the maximum. 

Happy travels!