Registered traveller required with EEA2?

Hi there,

I'm an NZ citizen with an EEA2 residence card. I was wondering if, on my next trip abroad, I should sign up for the Registered Traveller service. Or is it possible to go through the UK/EU border control area with the EEA2 card? I'm happy to sign up for the Registered Traveller service if I need to, but I haven't gone out of the country since I received my residence card so I'm unsure of which border control line I would go in to. I can't seem to find any information on this. Thanks in advance for any help.

The answer to that is actually a question: Which airport are you flying into?

If it's Heathrow, then yes, with your EEA RC you can -and are encouraged to- join the UK/EU line. With your EEA RC you don't have to fill in a landing card either (but for some reason all immigration officers I've had seemed to think my RC was not EEA, and asked me to fill one, only to say 'Oh no, you don't have to' a fraction of a second later when catching the letters 'EEA' on it). You cannot, however, join the ePassport gates.

If it's Birmingham, however, you will be yelled at and treated like a trespasser if you try to join the UK/EU line with a non-EU passport: No matter what you say, no matter how much you show your EEA RC to them, no matter how much you tell them how they do things at Heathrow, your passport is still non-EU. There you might find it useful to be a registered traveller.

I would say if you always fly to Heathrow, there is no point if you already have a EEA RC, also considering you need to pay 70 GBP for a year to be a registered traveller.