Yes, the Canary Islands are included.

David

i went to get my tickets yesterday at thomas cook and asked about the form but the assistant shook her head and said no you dont need to fill one in and that she had just come back from salou and didnt need to fill one in. however she would of went before the 13th. she said if i wanted to double check i should phone the spanish embassy in london. i dont think she really knew what i was on about. anyway ill just watch this site. i have already checked on thomas cook website and nothing on there about it. newcastle airport website does have information on it but just says for the individual to check on their tour operators website or give them a ring. im not worrying about it too much though as if it is just a form to fill in with them details on then it shouldnt take too long at check in ill get ther for them opening when i go on holiday on the 7th july.

Hi Mel,
Hope you don`t mind me guiding you, but if you go on Thomas Cook site; in the very top right hand corner is the Help section, if you click on this a list comes up; and No. 9 is about the A.P.I. Hope this helps, have a good holiday.
Best regards, Brigger

so can they scan your passport if it isn't biometric?

if they can't i think i'll use the idea of having the information printed on paper to give the check in staff, may make things quicker for the people behind me in the queue!

so can they scan your passport if it isn't biometric?

Scanners will be able to work on both machine readable passports and biometric passports. The problem is not all airports have the scanners yet, and so details have to be input manually at check-in. Having the details written on a piece of paper may not necessarily help, as some airlines may prefer that check-in staff copy them directly from passports.

David

i rang my travel agents today to see if i need to give them my passport info and its only if your going to mainland spain .thanx

i rang my travel agents today to see if i need to give them my passport info and its only if your going to mainland spain .thanx

Sounds to me like your travel agent needs to either read this site or changed his/her job .
Spain is Spain and that means mainland Spain and all her territories, which may suprise the travel agent to know that the Canary Islands and the Balaeric Islands, plus Cueta and Melilla in Morocco are part of Spain.

Sanji

i even rang the pl who we are flying with and even they have said that we dont need to hand them over and if anything changed they would contack me am going to the south of spain am going to fuerteventura which is further away than main land spain .thanx

not my problem if they need them as it wount be me getting fine the 40.000 ponds willl it and they is 3 of us traveling

Although expected by the travel industry, not all the airlines have got their act together on this. BA, bmi and Easyjet so far seem to be the only ones asking for this information before you get to the airport. The other airlines are collecting it at the airport. I agree with the other posts, if your tour op or travel agent doesn't know about this - they ought to be doing something else. It has been big news!!! I certainly advise all new bookings about it. Also helps to check in advance that you can find your passport and that it is valid still.

We flew out to Girona with Ryanair on the 14th [& back on the 21st] & didn't notice any delays whatsoever at check in - despite having not been asked in advance for this info - I'm presuming they simply collected the info from the passports.

many thanks brigger that has put my mind at rest as they will just collect it at check in. i was looking on the website the other day and couldnt find it at all. the info is well hidden.
mel

If flying with Ryanair you will be able to do it yourself on their site from July. Karen

I'm flying out to Gran Canaria with my parents on July 2nd (next Monday) im not sure which airline we're using, it might be Monarch (?)...

My dad had to phone about his passport recently, as he realised its due to expire in January and when the return flight is, is very close to being under 6 months before it expires and I believe when you fly you have to have a passport thats valid for at least 6 months(?) I'm not sure quite when it expires but he said that he had called (not sure if it was the tour operator or airport) and was told that it would be ok as it would just be valid coming back but only just by about 1 week or something! I did say he should get that in writing, you know what happens in those TV shows, oh they said it was ok when I phoned up

Anyway, I hope this hasn't changed the rules about that... its a shame they didn't mention about this API procedure when he called... at least he didn't mention it anyway...

Also I read that its when you check in that they take the information but when you arrive in the Spanish country, do they also require your passport info. at that side too, to double check it(?) I hope there aren't any other delays, just because its, for me, quite a long flight at 4 hour 50 out bound and its the evening we arrive, just before 8pm its scheduled to arrive, so ill be fair knackered I reckon, I won't want to hang around for too long and that will all be before we have to wait for the luggage coming out presumably *groan* I cant wait lol...

Hi IzzyS .. I wouldn't worry too much about API measures. So far there has not been the chaos predicted by some in the media and travel industry.

Passport validity is a separate matter, unrelated to API. As far as entry/immigration requirements for Spain are concerned, passports require to be valid only for the duration of your stay in the country. However, some airlines and tour operators ignore individual national entry requirements, and specify a minimum 6 month passport validity period for all destinations. In such cases, you should comply with their requirements. But given your imminent departure date, it is perhaps unlikely that you would be able to take any action at this late stage. Hopefully the companies you are using will be happy to comply with Spain's own requirements. For more info and discussion regarding passports, renewals, etc ... please click here.

David

Thanks for the quick reply David; much appreciated! I wasn't sure there would be any particular link between the two things but seeing as it sounds like this is adding to security checks and passports are pretty integral to that, I figured I might as well mention it... my passport will need updating soon too I think, they last 10 years and ill be 26 in Feb 2009... but anyway... I hadn't heard about this new procedure and just decided to check this site this morning, being me of course (I can be a bit paranoid! want the holiday to go as smoothly as possible and all of that) I see mention of this and am like why didn't I check the site a month ago? but anyway it doesn't sound too bad, so thats, well, good lol

The only other slight worry is that my family were checking their bags they want to take on as hand luggage and compared the sizes to the maximum allowed by the airline and it turns out that my bag, that ive used as hand luggage for the last 3 years and that I was given as a Christmas present 3 or 4 years ago, is all of 2 inches too wide we figured if they check it that closely then we can move all my stuff into another bag and put the bag into a suitcase...

So there's quite a few things I'm having to keep my fingers crossed won't cause us much problems! (sorry to go a bit off topic there!)

Hi Izzy

If your bag is "squishy" and you don't overfill it, it should be OK......at check-in they sometimes have trial "boxes" the size of the allowed dimensions, for you to put your bag into and see if it fits......and if it goes in, you're OK.

maybe somebody can confirm this?

Your right, thanks Acorn I actually checked Edinburgh airports (where we're flying from) website and it said exactly that, so it should be fine... im glad as I particularly like my bag and have spent a fair bit of money already, so I didn't want to have to go out and rush buy a new one at the weekend because the one I like is all of 2 inches too wide

hey everyone, we just got back from Ibiza on Saturday morning
Outbound check in was smooth no holdups at all and we hadn't given info pior to that.
Inbound our passports were scanned which i had never noticed in previous years.
Is that new>//?