Last year, the United States introduced the ESTA visa pre-clearance system. With ESTA, all US bound passengers from visa waiver countries need to apply for travel permission 72 hours before they depart.
The system is designed to give the US government a clear picture who will be attempting to enter the country. In its early stages, airlines were given a bit of leeway when it came to passengers boarding their planes without the ESTA approval, but starting March 20th, that will no longer be the case.
For each passenger that arrives in the US without clearance, the airline will be fined $3300. Obviously, this steep fine means the airlines will be paying extremely close attention to passenger documents. Dutch national carrier KLM claims that about 7% of their daily US bound passengers failed to apply for the ESTA clearance. This number equals 350 passengers, or a potential fine of over one million Dollars each day!
At check-in, staff will be able to verify the ESTA status, and for those passengers that “forgot” to do their homework, an expedited system is available. But if the systems are down, or the clearance is not granted on time, passengers will be denied boarding.