Should I get the kids British Passports? Are non EU queues at airports long enough to justify the expense?

[StillinMyPJs]

DH and I are both Dual British/Australian passport holders. We live in Australia with our three kids. We are planning a trip to the UK to see our families later this year and we will also go to Austria before returning to the UK on the way home.

I'm just wondering whether things would be easier and quicker through passport control in UK and Austria if the kids had British passports? I don't know whether it'd be worth paying over 200 GBP to essentially fast track on one trip. We are unlikely to return to Europe before Brexit.

Our kids are 8 and 5 (twins).

Any thoughts? Thanks.

IME the EU queues are generally longer than the non EU queues but I guess it depends on where the flight is coming from. At their ages they can't go through the eye scanner queues yet anyway.

To me it would be a pointless waste of money. WE send DH through the eye scanner queue and by the time we are through he's retrieved the luggage and we've saved time that way.

Generally as a family they like you all to go through together, so the children should be able to go along with you in the EU queue.

(I'm non-EU with EU partner and children and this is what we do. I was once (gently) told off when I went in the other queue without my family as they apparently like to take a look at you all together.)

To answer your actual question: no, I definitely wouldn't do it. Unless you are queue-phobic or something. You'll have to fill out UK landing cards for the kids, which you do on board the flight. An Australian passport is a good one to have, they won't have any hassle.

As Newts says, the relative length of the queues is dependent on stuff like where your flight is coming from, where other flights that arrived at the same time are from and the nationalities of all the passengers. Sometimes the longer queues seem to processed more swiftly than the short ones, too, so even if you all had the option to use either queue you could opt for the "wrong" one. Save your money.

Thanks for the speedy replies. I'll save my cash to buy pointless plastic crap to entertain the kids inflight and the G&Ts I'll need before embarking on a 24 journey from hell