Hi all,
I'm struggling to find them now but know I saw a few weeks ago a few posts about people thinking about traveling to the US from the UK and wanted to share my experience in case it was helpful for anyone else.
I am a US citizen, very recently (4th October!!) married to my UK citizen husband. We just travelled to New York today and got here in the end, eventually but only after much stress and drama.
My husband already had an existing ESTA that should have been valid until February 2022; we had checked the status of it a few weeks ago while getting organized for our travel this week.
In terms of other entry requirements; we both had proof of our vaccination status and negative covid tests. We did not have a copy of our marriage certificate yet (because our wedding was only 2 days ago and it takes about 2-3 weeks to receive) We did have a copy of the "Marriage Schedule," though to confirm we are married.
We were due to fly Edinburgh to Amsterdam at 6am on Wednesday and then Amsterdam to JFK. At around 11pm BST on Tuesday night, my husband received an email that just said "change of status" to his ESTA - he went onto the website and checked it again and all of a sudden it was listed as "expired" (6 hours before we were due to travel and outwith office hours for many customer service support lines)
I tried to see if I could read about how/why this may have happened online and never really found the answer. We spent hours on the phone to Customs and Border Patrol (number on the ESTA webpage) initially, who basically said they couldn't tell us what had happened and that we would need to contact the airline who were responsible for making checks about ESTAs etc and they would be able to advise us what to do.
We then contacted Virgin Atlantic who didn't know anything about this and tried to tell us to call back Customs and Border Patrol because it's their rules and as the airline they just enforce them to the best of their ability. - All very frustrating and basically no one we spoke to was willing to accept any liability in offering advice or interpretation of the rules/our circumstances.
We ended up deciding to just get to the airport as early as possible so we could speak to the airline check in staff; as we had eventually read advice somewhere that said other people had similar experiences (seemingly randomly) and the airline should be able to call the Regional Carrier Liason Group (RCLG) on behalf of the traveller (although, no one we spoke to on the phone from customs or the airline seemed to be aware of this or what it was)
(Here is a link to the reddit page I had found about similar circumstances... )
Anyway, we were both traveling to the airport pretty certain that I would end up being able to board the flight and my husband would have to stay behind and maybe try to get a flight on another day and sort out his ESTA in the meantime....we decided whilst sitting in the airport waiting for the check in desks to open (3am now for a 6am flight) to just apply online for another ESTA because the website says that you can always apply for another ESTA even if you have a valid one, so we figured there was no harm done to put in another application although not really expecting to get a response in time.
By some miracle, the ESTA was approved after about 45 minutes around 3:45am BST just as we were in line to check in for our flights. The check in attendant didn't see any issue with the ESTA and we checked in as normal - just needed the normal documents (negative covid tests, passport, wedding certificate because this is evidence of my husband's eligibility to enter US just now). I still have no clue why the original ESTA was randomly made to expire, but the second application was granted with no issue. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the fact that we've recently moved house, got married - although not sure how they would have been aware of any of these change of circumstances.
Hopefully things are only due to get a bit simpler for UK citizens traveling to the US with the presidential proclamation coming to an end in November, but not sure if anyone else will encounter similar issues with ESTAs.
