Our travel experience - UK to US and back!

Hi,

I thought I'd post about our recent travel experience in case it's at all useful to others! We travelled LHR to ORD and back on AA/BA with two USC and my UKC spouse. He has a B1/B2 visa and this actually made the experience at Heathrow very straightforward. Unlike an ESTA, his visa was not cancelled and after showing the BA employee our marriage certificate we checked in as usual - no calls to CBP to reinstate ESTAs needed. We did see a queue of people having this done and then spotted them again at the gate, so as long as you are at the airport in a timely fashion with your documents, all will be well. We used VeriFLY and this was super-useful to show documentation  such as tests results etc - took just seconds both to and from Ohare. We were never asked to show hard copies of anything, though I did have these with me.

At Ohare my husband ended up in secondary inspection for over an hour (grrr), but this is normal for him due to the reason for his visa. They never actually talk to him and nobody cared about seeing any documents etc. We spotted the other UKC spouses just going straight through.  Lines at immigration impressively short!

Departure from Ohare was easy - again used VeriFLY - and very fast UK entry through the automated gates.

For testing we used:

Express Test at Heathrow  for PCR (I know the US only needs antigen test....) and results were back in less than 24 hours. We live not far so just went along to get tested in the evening 3 days before the flight.

C19testing.co.uk - antigen tests to take with us for UK entry. They don't need you to do the video appointment so this was convenient and the certificates were accepted by VeriFLY.

Testing for All (day 2 tests) - These are due to arrive tomorrow. They are a very reasonable price at £48 and you can return via a Royal Mail priority box which is handy for us. Not that fussed how long they take since we don't need to quarantine!

Hope that helps someone!

Thanks so much for posting your experience. 

How did your Day 2 tests go with Testing for All?

Thanks again.

We had a good experience with Testing for All for the day 2 tests. The tests arrived as promised via DPD the day after we arrived (Tuesday). We posted them that evening so they were picked up in Wednesday's post, delivered to the lab on Thursday and we had results through this afternoon (Friday).  Some people did find it annoying that you need a separate email address to register each test - even for children. My son is a teen and has his own email so that wasn't an issue for us.

Thanks.  Glad it worked out for you. 

I'll make note of it for the next time I travel out of the country.

Thanks again for taking the time to post about your experience.

Q re the day 2 tests (after you arrive back in UK): do they need to be pcr tests? Or can they be rapid antigen (lateral flow) tests?

Also, just to clarify: did you also order the before-you-flew-back-to-UK tests before you left the UK, and just took them in your suitcase to the US?

The UK gov site was unclear.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-to-england-from-another-country-during-coronavirus-covid-19

Just shopping around for tests, to order the pre-going-to-US and the Day 2 tests together.
thanks.

Q re the day 2 tests (after you arrive back in UK): do they need to be pcr tests? Or can they be rapid antigen (lateral flow) tests?

Also, just to clarify: did you also order the before-you-flew-back-to-UK tests before you left the UK, and just took them in your suitcase to the US?

The UK gov site was unclear.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-to-england-from-another-country-during-coronavirus-covid-19

Just shopping around for tests, to order the pre-going-to-US and the Day 2 tests together.
thanks.

As it stands, presuming you're fully vaccinated, you need a PCR test for your Day 2. This needs booking before travelling back to the UK. They cannot be rapid antigen. They use these tests to check for strains from different countries which can only be provided with a PCR.

The tests required before travelling back to the UK can be from whoever you want. I, personally, used Qured which were tests you took with you and was performed via webcam. They then send certificates. There are also companies which you don't even need a web appointment for, you just take a picture (which seems bonkers) and they send you a certificate. I do not know who these are though sorry. Qured also do tests for the US (they're the exact same tests). I think they're £39 but lowered to £33 with BA discount.

Also, just to clarify: did you also order the before-you-flew-back-to-UK tests before you left the UK, and just took them in your suitcase to the US?

The UK gov site was unclear.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-to-england-from-another-country-during-coronavirus-covid-19

Yes, I took my test in my suitcase to the US.

Starting October 4, you don't need a pre-departure test for returning to the UK if you're fully vaccinated, unless you're returning from a Red list country.

Thanks for posting. I will be traveling to the US shortly with BA/AA and was wondering whether to use Verifly.  User reviews aren't very good but it seemed like you had a good experience.   Although the UK government does not require a pre-departure test to return to the UK do the US authorities require any pre-test (we will be traveling to Pennsylvania)

Thanks for posting. I will be traveling to the US shortly with BA/AA and was wondering whether to use Verifly.  User reviews aren't very good but it seemed like you had a good experience.   Although the UK government does not require a pre-departure test to return to the UK do the US authorities require any pre-test (we will be traveling to Pennsylvania)

I personally could not get verifly to work and I'm not technology illiterate. By the time I got anywhere near the point of it working I'd wasted more time than the time it was supposed to save. Maybe I missed something or it's been updated since June.

Yes, you still need a Rapid Antigen Test before travelling to the US. As you probably know, you cannot use NHS supplied tests and must be private. I personally like and used Qured who do the tests over webcam at any time. They were £33 with £6 discount through BA.

Just to note:- I'm presuming you're fully vaccinated. If not, you'll need a test before travelling back to the UK.

We just returned from our trip to the US and we were pleasantly surprised by how smooth the whole travel process was.  The Verifly app took a little bit of getting used to it but once mastered it worked very well and we used it with American Airlines at Heathrow and British Airways in Philadelphia. It certainly saved us having to show all our different bits of paper (which we did have just in case). We found that we had to use Verifly just on one phone.  It did not allow us to use it on multiple devices.  Filling out the passenger locator form for our return to the UK seemed to take the longest time although again it was not too painful.  Strangely enough Heathrow and Edinburgh airport seemed much busier than Philly despite the US appearing to be more open for tourism travel.  BTW - in the US itself you don't need to be tested to travel on an airplane.  You wouldn't know if the person sitting next to you had Covid.  Fortunately we did did not have to take any internal flights.  Since we were traveling to be with family and friends we did not frequent many public places or restaurants but our experience was that mask wearing in shops and restaurants (in PA or MD) was very low. 

While in the US we used a 3 PAYG SIM card which gave us 12GB of data for 10 pounds.   Great value although we used Skype for making US calls since 3 only gives you free calls back to the UK.  We also used an Airalo e-SIM for data - that worked quite well although we could not get it to work until  the 2nd day of our trip, and it twice stopped working for a day.  We could not figure out whether this was a problem with our phone or the esim.     

Rental cars were very expensive when we looked at the regular US car rental sites before our trip.  We ended up using VIP Cars and got a reasonable deal although we ended up with a "managers special" from Hertz.   It was a small car but that was fine for us.  Having said that we could have upgraded to an SUV for an extra $10/day which would have worked out far cheaper than if we had booked the SUV directly from the UK. 

All in all it was an excellent trip and we were happy that we were able to travel.