Aruba ED Card — your entry form, read and filed

This is the part travellers underestimate, and it is the reason the Aruba ED Card is worth getting right.

When your form is accepted you receive a confirmation with a QR code on it. That code is what the airline scans at check-in, at the departure airport, before you are given a boarding pass. It is not a formality at the Aruba end. It happens at your end, hours before the flight.

A traveller who turns up without a valid ED Card is not simply delayed on arrival. They can be refused boarding, at the airport they are standing in, with a booked seat and a paid holiday on the other side of it.

That is why the details matter more than the form looks like it should. The QR code is only issued if the information you submitted is complete and consistent, and it is tied to the passport you named. We check the passport number, the flight and the arrival date against each other before your Aruba ED Card goes in, precisely so that the code arrives.

Your Aruba ED Card can be filed in the seven days before you travel. That is a wider window than most entry forms give you, and it is worth using.

Filing early inside the window rather than the night before means that if something needs correcting, there is time to correct it. Filing at the last minute means finding out at the check-in desk.

Send us your passport and flight details whenever suits you, today if you like. We prepare your Aruba entry form now, hold it ready, and file it as soon as your window opens. Your confirmation, with its QR code, reaches your inbox the same day.

Every traveller arriving in Aruba completes an ED Card. That means every person on the booking, not one form per family.

Children need one. Infants need one, completed by a parent or guardian. A family of four is four separate Aruba ED Cards, four QR codes, four scans at the gate.

Travellers on a cruise that calls at Aruba, travellers connecting through, and returning visitors who have done it before all complete a fresh Aruba entry form for each trip. There is no card that carries over from last year.

Add everyone travelling with you to a single application and the shared details, your flight and accommodation, are entered once. Each person still gets their own Aruba arrival card at the end of it.

Aruba immigration scans the QR code on your ED Card when you reach the counter at Queen Beatrix, and your details come up linked to the passport you hand over. When the form and the passport agree, that is the whole interaction.

Travellers whose Aruba immigration form does not match their passport are the ones who end up standing aside while it is sorted out, at the end of a flight, with the rest of the queue moving past them.

Almost every problem with an Aruba ED Card comes down to that mismatch, and that is exactly what we look for before yours is submitted.