cornmatthew

Here's a situation that's new for us, but I suspect a few people here have dealt with.

We'll be taking a trip back to the UK soon with our baby son. My wife and I are dual British/Canadian and have both passports. So on past trips we've always gone through the EU line at Heathrow with our British passports.

Now... the baby only has a Canadian passport. He's British by descent, but I suspect he won't have a British passport in time for the trip. Can we still use the EU line? And will he need a landing card?

haggis88

just put him in your hand luggage, they won't notice

Flossie and Jim

We just asked the person who was manning the back of the line and they sent us to the UK/EU line - we both had UK passports and daughter had a Canadian one.


If we did it again, I would probably just choose the shorter of the two lines

Former Lancastrian

Dont you all travel as a family so if you have UK passports use UK/EU line.
I tend to think the baby on its own with a Canadian passport might struggle going through the other line especially when being questioned about purpose of visit etc etc

MarylandNed

We've received different answers from different immigration officers. So we've gone through whichever line is shorter in this situation. We've never been sent to the other line once we reached an immigration officer. Recently my wife (UK passport) went through the EU line with our daughter (US passport) and there was no problem. Our daughter had a completed landing card with "UK/US" as the nationality. We always travel with copies of our birth certs so we could have produced that as proof if asked.

Atlantic Xpat

I,ve always gone through the EU line with the family on Canadian passports and me on a British one with no issues.

Lemonfish

Same situation for us, except baby only has Canadian passport and we currently only have UK ones (waiting 18 months for citizenship and counting..).

We always go through the EU line, but we do need to fill out a UK landing card for baby. We've done the same when traveling between France and UK.

Each time we go, officers tell us that baby 'is eligible for a British passport' and also if we come back to UK to live she'll need one. Think they'd rather we just got her one to make the administration easier.

ninaDGBCA

When we flew from Ottawa to Manchester last December we were told by the boarder guys that we (husband , me and 2 girls all on UK/EU passports) have to accompany our then 6 week old "Canadian" daughter. As an EU passport holder can accompany a Canadian but apparently not the other way. So I guess it depends on the airport and how they deal with it.

cornmatthew

We're back from our trip. In case anyone's interested how things turned out: we used the UK/EU line at LHR. Everything went more or less smoothly, except that all the desks seem to share one passport stamp. A family at the desk next to us were doing something terribly complicated, so we had to wait a few minutes for our turn with the stamp.

The officer told us we were welcome to use whichever line we prefer. Although we'll probably get him a British passport before the next trip anyway. I see there's a whole thread about that now.

ultrarunner

Small kids under 4 do travel free after all