transit visa

[Edward Menezes]

I am travelling by British air via london from India to US and from US to Venice. Here I will break journey and tgen travel from Venice to India again via London...thry say I will require a airside transit visa as from Venice to India I will be stopping at London for 5 hrs. I dont understand, if I am not crossing immigration and staying on the air side why should I require a transit visa. They say that since I am returning from Venice ...it is considered as final destination and hence required...can anyone help

[Shuvojit Ghosh]

DATV exemption conditions

Hi, Indian passport holders are exempted from DATV if one of the following applies (source - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/india/transit/no) -


are travelling to Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA and have a valid visa for that country
are travelling from Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the USA and it’s less than 6 months since you last entered that country with a valid entry visa
have a valid US permanent residence card issued on or after 21 April 1998 (or an I-797 extension letter issued by the Bureau of Citizenship if it’s expired)
have a valid Canadian permanent resident card issued on or after 28 June 2002
have a valid uniform format category D visa for entry to a state in the European Economic Area (EEA)
have a valid uniform format residence permit issued by an EEA state

While travelling to US from UK, you meet condition 1. However during your inbound journey you DO NOT meet any of the aforementioned conditions, more specifically condition 2 since you're travelling from Italy, and not the US. I know the requirement for a visa even when you stay airside sounds pretty silly, but unfortunately that's the way it is. When I was travelling from Stockholm via London, they thoroughly checked if I had met any of the conditions which I fortunately did(condition 4).

The only two options you have are -

1) Get a direct airside transit visa for UK.
2) Re route your flight through Lufthansa, KLM, Air France etc and avoid transiting through the UK.

Hope this helps.