Travelling to the usa, What is esta?

Hi, We are going to new york in october, It has been a few years since we were last there and I would appreciate any help, We are flying from shannon in to jfk if that matters, What clearance do we need , For a start I know we have to put in our api details on the aer lingus site, From memory we had to fill in a green form at Shannon also but now I have heard of esta so I am a bit confused , I just need to dot the I,s and cross the T,s and have them out of the way, Thanks in advance for any help. Regards Cumnor.

It's all here.
https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/
It can take a few days for it to process so do it in plenty of time.

I know a machine readable passport is important.

Salaried. Just a word of warning. I know someone who applied for one of these estas but the site turned out to be a cowboy site. The esta came through ok but cost way over the odds. Make sure its the official site you purchase form. Should only cost about 15$.

It is important to input your passport details correctly to get your ESTA.
Some people are being stopped at the airport for inputting passport number incorrectly i.e. putting in alphabetic instead of numeric for zero. They have to reapply for ESTA before travelling.

Thanks for the replies lads , Is there anything else that I should be doing beforehand, Also how do you tell if you have the correct type passport.

salaried, these links might help clarify that


http://www.dfa.ie/home/index.aspx?id=266

[broken link removed]

Thanks very much for your replies all, Very helpful as usual, Regards Salaried.