From 25 February, Polish carriers and ground-handling agents must confirm that every visa-exempt passenger bound for the United Kingdom holds a valid Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before issuing a boarding pass. The directive—part of London’s phased global roll-out—was communicated to airports in Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk and Wrocław this week. Travellers without a digital clearance will be denied check-in, even if they hold a valid passport.(polskieradio.pl)
The British ETA, granted via a smartphone app or government website, costs £10, is valid for two years and allows stays of up to six months per visit. Dual Polish-British citizens must present their British passport when re-entering the UK, a nuance consular officials say is already catching out holiday-makers who attempt to travel solely on their Polish documents.
![Polish airports start enforcing UK Electronic Travel Authorisation before boarding]()
To help travellers navigate the new UK ETA requirements, VisaHQ offers Polish citizens a streamlined online service that walks users through the application, provides status alerts and securely stores travel documents for future trips. Its dedicated Poland portal (https://www.visahq.com/poland/) also covers visas for dozens of other destinations, making it a convenient tool for both individual travellers and corporate mobility teams.
Airlines face carrier-liability fines if they transport inadmissible passengers, so check-in agents are adopting zero-tolerance procedures similar to those used for US ESTA screening. Early anecdotal reports from Chopin Airport suggest that roughly one in twenty morning-peak passengers had to step out of line on the first day to complete an ETA on-the-spot, delaying queues.
For mobility teams the change means updating pre-trip approval workflows and traveller communications—especially for short-notice engineers and executives accustomed to “turn-up-and-go” travel to London. Employers may wish to store ETA numbers in travel-profile databases alongside ESTA and eTA data to ensure future compliance and smoother duty-of-care tracking.
The British ETA, granted via a smartphone app or government website, costs £10, is valid for two years and allows stays of up to six months per visit. Dual Polish-British citizens must present their British passport when re-entering the UK, a nuance consular officials say is already catching out holiday-makers who attempt to travel solely on their Polish documents.
To help travellers navigate the new UK ETA requirements, VisaHQ offers Polish citizens a streamlined online service that walks users through the application, provides status alerts and securely stores travel documents for future trips. Its dedicated Poland portal (https://www.visahq.com/poland/) also covers visas for dozens of other destinations, making it a convenient tool for both individual travellers and corporate mobility teams.
Airlines face carrier-liability fines if they transport inadmissible passengers, so check-in agents are adopting zero-tolerance procedures similar to those used for US ESTA screening. Early anecdotal reports from Chopin Airport suggest that roughly one in twenty morning-peak passengers had to step out of line on the first day to complete an ETA on-the-spot, delaying queues.
For mobility teams the change means updating pre-trip approval workflows and traveller communications—especially for short-notice engineers and executives accustomed to “turn-up-and-go” travel to London. Employers may wish to store ETA numbers in travel-profile databases alongside ESTA and eTA data to ensure future compliance and smoother duty-of-care tracking.
