Passengers arriving on business aircraft at UK airports may face delays in clearing immigration, following a move by the UK Border Agency to withdraw the so-called pre-clearance process. This allowed FBOs to simply give officials passenger lists for flights with nationality details and leave it to them to decide whether or not they wished to personally inspect passports.
Now, according to several London-area FBOs, handlers are obliged to take passports to Border Agency officers in the main terminal buildings of airports, while their customers wait to be allowed entry into the UK. Sean Raftery, managing director of Universal Aviation UK, confirmed that pre-clearance has been suspended. However, he maintained that at London Stansted Airport, where Universal has its own FBO, immigration officers still are permanently present in the business aviation terminal from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Outside these hours, passenger passports have to be taken to the main terminal which is on the other side of the airport and several miles away.
