Do you find it tiresome to fill out those little green cards about your drug convictions, war crimes and hotel address in the States? You know, the ones handed out by the cabin crew a few hours before landing?

Well, you've had it easy. The US Department of Homeland Security is about to make transatlantic trips considerably more difficult. The result, they hope, will be fewer cancelled ights, but the administration involved has been described as "ill conceived" and a "mess" by travel industry insiders.

The crackdown on US entry has two elements. The first concerns biometric passports. As long as you have a machine-readable passport that does not expire until late 2005, this shouldn't concern you. But if you are issued with a new passport between October 26, 2004 and the autumn of 2005, you will not be able to travel visa-free to the US. That means a hefty fee and an interview at the US embassy.

Britain is hoping the plan to introduce biometric passports by mid-2005 will be enough to persuade the US to postpone the October deadline. But don't count on a diplomatic change of heart, because pressure from Washington to introduce biometric passports will make the proposed introduction of a biometric British ID card simpler. The more difficult it is to travel without a biometric identifier, the easier the home secretary will find it to sell the idea to the British public.

What will that identifier be? The UK Passport Services (UKPS) says it will be a facial image "derived from a passport photograph". But the new-style passports will also have the ability to store finger prints, iris patterns, or both.

Pooling data between departments in this way might be more convenient for the individual, who would only have to be finger-printed, scanned or photographed once, but it is not clear how much of the information available to a British government department could eventually be accessed by a US immigration officer.

Britons with a criminal record - and even those who have been arrested but not convicted - are not entitled to enter the US under the visa-waiver scheme (for details visit www.usembassy.org.uk/cons_web/visa/niv/vwp.htm).

The Home Office has been anxious to reassure civil liberties campaigners that departments will not be able to share personal data unless it is absolutely necessary. But another serious terrorist attack on US soil, particularly if it was associated with Britons or a British airline, could alter that.

For the time being, the emphasis is on proving your identity. In the US, the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) is piloting a scheme called Capps II on internal Delta ights. It aims to establish a traveller's ID by cross-checking the details they provide with "commercially available information" of the kind a mobile phone company scans before deciding whether to give you a contract.

This has provoked outrage in some quarters. One site is urging yers to boycott Delta (www.boycottdelta.org/delta_background.html) while the DHS has responded with a list of "Myths and Facts" about the scheme (www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=3163).

But it is the DHS's determination to collect extra information that poses the biggest administrative challenge for British ticket agents. Airlines are already required to pass on basic information about you to the US authorities - your name, passport number, nationality, sex and date of birth. But soon that list will be extended to include the passport's expiry date, your country of residence, details of any visa you have had to obtain and the address where you plan to stay in the US.

Understandably, BA wants to collect as much of this information as possible before check-in. But until travel agents and websites have incorporated the right questions into their booking forms - which, without a ruling from the States, they can't do - the airline is playing safe and asking everyone ying from March onwards to return to the site and fill in a special form.

"If you book through a travel agent, we're asking the agent to either enter the data via BA.com or to advise the customer to go to BA.com themselves," says a BA spokeswoman. "From our perspective, the key is first of all creating the awareness and then getting people to file online."

But BA still faces a challenge in making its website fully compatible with Macs.In the meantime, the best advice for travellers to the States is: check your passport, file any details in advance and check-in even earlier than usual.

Traffic on the air waves ...

· Easyjet is launching three new routes to central Europe. Stansted-Basel starts March 28, Stansted-Ljubljana a month later and Luton-Budapest on May 1, the date Hungary joins the EU. A fourth route, Luton-Dortmund, starts at the end of May and will depart twice daily. www.easyjet.com

· US Airways, which emerged from bankruptcy protection last year, has put some of its assets, including its east coast shuttle service and US Airways Express, up for sale. Southwest (www.southwest.com) has cut fares from its Philadelphia hub, forcing the beleaguered airline to cut costs again.

· Continental Airlines will fly from Birmingham to New York twice daily from mid-June. Flight schedules for its British routes can be found at www.continental.com/uk/). Meanwhile, BMI will codeshare with Air Canada from April 25 on the Manchester-Toronto route (www.flybmi.com).

· Duo, the Maersk Air spin-off with hubs in Birmingham and Edinburgh, have lowered fares for online bookings. A typical economy single to a German city costs between £49-£69; if you book a business ticket (typically around £239 for Birmingham-Berlin) a chauffeur will pick you up free from an address within a 30-mile radius. www.duo.com

· Two low-cost airlines have run into trouble. Flying Finn grounded flights from Stansted to Helsinki last month and Jet Magic, the Cork-based airline, bit the dust on January 28. The company said it had been unable to sell enough seats on business routes to stay afloat. www.jetmagic.com