Flying to London Soon? Americans Are Getting New UK Passport Privileges.

A silver lining to this whole Brexit mess

October 31, 2018 9:00 am

Good news: Turns out Brexit is going to be amazing!

That is, if you’re an American passport holder looking to make good time at a British airport — and don’t have any concerns about the global financial picture going into a “no-deal Brexit” many analysts say could trigger devastating consequences for Brexiters, Remainers and the rest of the world alike!

The former, sunnier-side of that statement: Americans are now “able to use electronic passport gates at U.K. airports that were previously reserved for European citizens,” writes Bloomberg.

Anyone who’s ever flown into Heathrow knows that lines for non-Europeans are taxing. Even though the U.K. isn’t part of the Schengen Zone, the 26 nation-bloc permitting borderless travel between, say, France and Germany and Italy and others, it does give special consideration to European travelers. As Heathrow puts it, there’s “one [line] for European Union, European Economic Area, British and Swiss nationals, and a second for all other nationalities.” The second line is garbage.

But now that the U.K. is on its way out of the European Union, it’s leaving some dog poop under the rug for the landlord — and re-prioritizing its (airline queue) friends list, giving faster access to Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Japanese and Aussies.

If anyone knows how this is all going to shake out, they’re lying, and anyone traveling to London on business may soon find themselves flying to Frankfurt, Brussels or Paris instead. But we’ll take what we can get.

Image: Scott Barbour/Getty

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