gnaget

I have been informed that you cannot avoid security when connecting at LHR T2. So the UK has an exception to the EU security regulations?

Even if it changes I am guessing the layout will not allow you to be "clean" upon arrival from the EU or USA like for example in Munich and CPH? It also works in FRA arriving from EU and as long as you don't get a bus gate or arrive at the B gates from USA.

This is unfortunate and I guess that I will continue to avoid LHR for connecting flights. It could have been a nice set-up with this *A terminal.

stut

IIRC, the EU security regulations for transfers only apply to the Schengen zone, of which the UK is not a member. For transfers at UK airports, only domestic and CTA flights are transfer security-free, and even then, that's only if the airport is set up for transfers (which will only apply to major airports, given the growth in point-to-point airlines).

gnaget

I doubt it has anything to do with Schengen because if you arrive from the US at all other EU airports (and Norway and CH) then you are clean (as long as the set up allows for it).

Similarly arrivals from the UK are clean in the rest of the EU. Reciprocity would be nice.

But the US does not not reciprocate with the EU either.....

stut

This is all from memory, but ISTR that Schengen airports may consider Schengen arrivals to be sterile, but should screen all non-Schengen to Schengen transfers.

The inconsistency is with non-Schengen to non-Schengen transfers. There are certain airport layouts that allow this by default because of non-segregated departures and arrivals (e.g. CPH), but this means the airport is considered high risk.

The UK is slightly different. All non-CTA arrivals have to be segregated from departures, a process that started after 9/11 (again IIRC). This resulted in a number of modifications to airports, some of them frankly comical (the old LHR T2 had security guards moving barriers around to block whole flows of passengers temporarily to avoid mixing) but most of them permanent - LHR T1 had a number of mixed areas, and T3 was completely mixed.

Then the airports decided they wanted to mix domestic and international departures. As there's no ID card here, no ID requirement for domestic travel, and international transfers are allowed without passing immigration, the solution was to take digital photographs when the BP was scanned, so that these could be cross-matched at the gate - thereby avoiding the situation where somebody could arrive on an international-to-international transfer, and switch boarding passes for a domestic flight. This was fine for major transfer points, but most of the smaller airports now have mainly point-to-point, low cost airlines, so just don't have any transfer route.

So the situation is somewhat different - not least because the CTA is substantially smaller than the Schengen zone.

But it does vary according to airport. AMS, for example, doesn't allow non-Schengen to non-Schengen without security. CPH does. VIE has an odd setup where temporary immigration points can be put on Schengen gates to make them a little non-Schengen area, leading to all sorts of complications.

I can think of very few locations where I can step off a flight from UK to the Schengen zone, and walk straight on to a Schengen flight (actually, I think the handful I can think of have since been reconfigured).

Reciprocity, well... Who knows. I'm not convinced someone boarding at Barra heading to the US is safer than someone boarding at Newcastle heading to Barcelona via Paris. But what do I know?

NewbieRunner

I only know about German and Swiss airports (FRA, MUC, DUS and ZRH) but arrivals from the UK are clean with some exceptions due to the layout of the airport. Arrivals from the UK in FRA will almost always end up in an 'unclean' area but MUC can handle arrivals from the US and UK very well. ZRH is half-hearted. Arriving from the UK you can connect to Schengen destinations (and any non-Schengen destinations departing from D) without re-clearing security unless you happen to arrive at a bus gate. If your connecting flight departs from an E gate (longhaul destinations) you cannot avoid security unless you go into Schengen and out again.

AFAIK UK airports treat everybody as 'unclean' unless they have been screened at another UK airport.

gnaget

Yes, Newbie is correct. At CPH and MUC (where you can always arrive clean from EU or US) then non-Schengen to non-Schengen security depends on where you fly from.

If you arrive from Tokyo and want to fly to LHR then you have to go through security, but if you arrive from the US then you are clean.

What MUC and CPH do is dump you into the clean departures area from a US or UK flight in the non-Schengen area. Once I flew ORD-MUC-IST and my IST flight was literally the next gate over after I walked off the plane.

gnaget

This is what is annoying and the US does the same. The US should treat EU arrivals as clean and not subject them to security.

Andy33

According to Heathrow Airport itself you avoid security if you arrive on a UK domestic flight at T2 and depart on an international flight (or another domestic flight) from the same terminal. Exactly the same arrangement has been in place for years at T5 and T1. If you need to change terminals after arriving on a domestic flight you will need to go through security as you will have mingled with passengers from international flights on the airside bus.
If you arrive from outside the UK and want to connect at any UK airport you will always have to go through security again. Although I'm sure there will be some, I've yet to connect at an airport anywhere else in the EU that didn't require me to go through security again when connecting there from the UK to somewhere else.
As far as I know the EU regulations are in fact more like guidelines, or just about every country must have exceptions, since very few airports are actually laid out to allow all the permutations of intra and extra Schengen arrivals and departures and security-free or security-required transfers to happen according to the book, inevitably there are compromises, and inevitably these have to be by making more people go through security than might technically need it.
Look at ATH for instance, a modern airport (2002) where every single connecting passenger has to go through security again, even domestic-domestic.

http://www.heathrowairport.com/heath...-international

gnaget

Why are you defending the idiocy? Do you think that UK security is superior to Danish, German or Swiss?

Try MUC or CPH if you don't want to be re-screened for a connection from the UK. As airports are improved and modernized then this will become more widespread in Europe (outside the UK).

I think after the current work is completed in FRA then it will become better or at least fewer bus gate arrivals.

As soon as it became possible, maybe 7 years ago when US bound flights moved to the upper A gates (now the Z gates), to fly ARN-FRA-USA without security in FRA then it became my choice whereas before that, LHR was an option.

NewbieRunner

MUC is going to have 3 separate carriages/compartments on their shuttle between T2 and the satellite when it opens next year, so they can separate Schengen, clean non-Schengen and unclean non-Schengen passengers. ^

I don't hold much hope for FRA. The opening of Pier A+ promised a lot of improvemnents which unfortunately did not materialise. Half of Pier A+ (Schengen level) is used, if at all, as expensive bus gates in any case.

Genius1

It is a UK Department for Transport requirement that all international passengers are security screened to UK DfT standards before departing on another flight from the UK.

Security in many countries is not to the standard of the UK's security.

Often1

I can't think of a US airport which is set up to handle a third type of arrival, e.g., 1) domestic; 2) international but not "clean"; and 3) international but "clean". Nor can I see the US supporting the cost of making that work.

gnaget

It's all security theater, but the EU and US meet the standards. Please don't drink the cool aid.

NewbieRunner

Including those in the other EU countries? I'm surprised the UK actually allows any aircraft originating from outside the UK to fly through its airspace.

gnaget

Not true because passengers are typically segregated (herded) in special channels upon arrival. In an airport like IAD where passengers are transported in mobile lounges then it would be easy. However, the issue is that passengers mix at immigration in the current set up but some airports have special areas for connecting passengers. There is no transit area, which is another bad feature of the current set up in US airports, which will never change.