UK to scrap Landing Cards from Monday

It is a pain to fill out, and to be honest, not sure what information they glean from them that a passport or a few questions can't cover, including scanning the passport.

I suppose where you are staying is the only thing that will not be captured, but that information, for me, was wrong after a night or so.

It will be better when they open the e-gates to more travelers as planned.

I remember a couple years ago the control officer being most annoyed with me when I entered the name of our lodging but not the address on the landing card, and unhappy that I replied that i did not know the address, can't you look it up? (we had stayed there before, we knew how to get there.) I also recall on our first trip we had a silly connection in Glasgow rather than direct to Amsterdam (an Orbitz package, this was before we learned how to do things easily) and the control person there being really unhappy with my answer to "How long will you be here?" with my reply of "Only long enough to go to the counter, get our next boarding pass, and go to the new gate".

The cards also acted as the record of the conversation between the border official and the entrant, as well as containing the same stamp as put in the passport. Digital copies were retained for 15 years, but the physical cards were destroyed usually within a few days, in many cases before visitors would have left.

Chris I think the decision to not have a UK section is because there is so much interest in the separate countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Perhaps someone from the staff could weigh in but if it were all one section, it would be harder to sift through even for responders. For example, I feel comfortable answering questions on some parts of England and Scotland, but we’ve never been to Ireland and that seems to be a very busy section.