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I'm supplying my pre-travel passenger information on the British Airways website for a flight to the USA.

It gives the option to enter a US redress number, which I believe would be needed if a passenger with a similar name to mine were on the no-fly list. I don't need such a number, have never had one, and have been to the USA many times never needing to provide one.

The BA site will not permit me to leave the field blank or enter "none", or 7 zeros. Giving the message

We have found some problems with the details you have provided There is a problem with the Redress Number you have entered. Please verify this and resubmit your details.

Obviously, I'll ask BA what to do but I thought possibly other travellers experiences might be quicker to give an answer or a work-around until BA fixes the core problem.

For reference this information about the format of redress control numbers.

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    Are you sure you’re inputting your data correctly? I’m no IT expert but if this is a core problem 000s of passengers would probably be affected so it seems unlikely that BA doesn’t know about it.
    – Traveller
    Commented Mar 11 at 11:33
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    @Traveller - well, exactly. Seems impossible. But, the error message is very specific, and there appears to be just one field I can fill in or leave empty. Part of my motivation in raising the issue was the hope that either other folk would report the same issue or tell me that they've got past this and perhaps hint how.
    – djna
    Commented Mar 11 at 15:17
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    You could try clearing cache and cookies in your browser
    – Traveller
    Commented Mar 11 at 16:53

2 Answers 2

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As a workaround I used the chat facility to talk to a representative who entered the API data for me. I then went to the web site again and discovered that the agent had set my phone number country to Khazakstan.

So I then tried to amend this and again got the same complaint about the Redress number. I then had the inspiration of using a different browser. I am on a MacBook and was using Chrome. I also have Firefox installed, used that and was able to make the change to the phone number immediately.

Lessons: 1). Check what the service centre does. 2). Try different browsers.

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    Those "have to use another browser" issues are indeed amazing! Good call
    – Fattie
    Commented Mar 12 at 13:21
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    This is the only time I've heard of a big company designing their website to work correctly on Firefox and not giving a s**t about Chrome. It's almost always the other way around.
    – Brian
    Commented Mar 12 at 14:19
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    "designing" hmm, perhaps "lucked into because this dev prefers Firefox".....
    – deep64blue
    Commented Mar 12 at 17:46
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    Why would you be on a Mac and use Chrome? Safari is a million times better and doesn't send data back to Google.
    – Cris Luengo
    Commented Mar 12 at 22:21
  • @CrisLuengo I've often wondered the same thing, inertia is strange ;-)
    – djna
    Commented Mar 13 at 8:13
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I'll ask BA what to do but I possibly this site might be quicker to give an answer.

Doubtful, since this is a matter that British Airways needs to resolve, since most of their customers won't have (or need) such a number.

You should inform BA that it is an optional field that can be left blank based on the information found on their site:

Quick Facts about Redress Control Numbers

  • If you feel that your request for redress was resolved incorrectly, please follow the instructions that you received in your resolution letter.
  • Not everyone has or needs a redress number. You will have a redress number if you have applied for DHS TRIP.

Booking Travel with a Redress Control Number

  • If you don't have a redress number and an airline or a travel site asks for your redress number, you can leave it blank.
  • If you do not have a redress number, you will still be able to make reservations and travel as normal. The redress number is an optional field and is not relevant for most travelers
  • You may provide your redress number when you make a reservation or when updating your airline profile.
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    My hope is that other folks have hit the problem and found a workaround, for example the magic incantation to say "I have no redress number", or a different web page, or using a different browser. Needless to say, getting help from BA was frustratingly slow, but eventually an nice person chatted to me and did some manual data entry for me - wasted about 45 minutes of my time.
    – djna
    Commented Mar 11 at 8:44
  • @djna This is probably a simple programing error that when reported can be easly resolved. Getting them to report it is probably the only solution since it would effect most reservation attempts.
    – Mark Johnson
    Commented Mar 11 at 8:50
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    I'm a programmer; I am 99.9% certain it's a programming error :-) However I can't see any simple way to tell BA of a web site issue such as this. I have sent an email query in the "any other questions" category. Who knows whether they will listen. One would think that a very high number of passengers heading for the US would hit this issue.
    – djna
    Commented Mar 11 at 8:54
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    I should say that the BA person I chatted to had no interest whatsoever in hearing about the likely web site issue.
    – djna
    Commented Mar 11 at 8:56
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    @djna you can inspect the field to see if it has the required attribute on it
    – WhatsThePoint
    Commented Mar 11 at 21:55

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