rollingdeep

Try being non-white and going to the US! In the UK only time I have been stopped was actually on the tube after the terror attacks again nothing to do with anything but my skin colour.

knifeandfork

But not in the UK? Not at LHR?

Speaking in my capacity as a 40-something, privately educated, doughy, white guy with a degree from a local college slightly to the north of High Wycombe, I have never suffered one half second of discrimination in my lily-livered life. I also occasionally wear Boden. Deal with it.

I reckon I've flown 750+ sectors in total over the years. Sum total of customs inspections: one, at LAX. On my gap year, in 1993. When drunk as a lord after spending 13 hours power drinking with some Aussie farmers' wives in the Y smoking section of a UA 747 in 1993 SYD-LAX (it happened back then.) I was also wearing purple harem pants that I'd bought in Bali. There are no easy answers.

I've often felt deeply uncomfortable at LHR over the years, especially pre T5, at T4 and T1, and noticing that the only people getting turned over at the metal tables, ahem, didn't look like me.

stut

Oh, quite a few, usually when travelling alone. A couple of times at Dover and Portsmouth ferry terminals. Been pulled over a couple of times at the airbridge arriving into LHR from AMS (used to travel there very frequently for work in my 20s).

Oh, and several times voluntarily at LHR T1, as I was travelling with some expensive equipment and a carnet de passages and so had to go through the red channel. They can take ages to arrive when you need them.

Elsewhere, well... How long have you got? MIA, ORD, YUL, SVO, AMS, CUR, TAS, BOM, HYD, Wagah, HKG, BKK, AKL... I just look dodgy, don't I?

VivoPerLei

I can believe that. The one and only time I've ever been stopped (and I've been flying internationally since 1987) was when my wife packed her suitcase with far more than the legal amount of cigarettes, costing me a substantial fine. The profiling that these people use is nothing short of amazing.

ajax

I've been inspected exactly once, and it was from LHR, and that's after probably 300-400 arrivals into the airport over the past 15 years. Unfortunately I was coming back from Lahore of all places and that generated all sorts of excitement. In the end, it took about 15 minutes and the officer didn't find anything of interest, there being nothing of interest to find. It's potluck, I guess.

flatlander

I've had one involuntary inspection entering the UK in 22-odd years of independent international travel. In the past 8 years of 30-40 arrivals into the UK each year I haven't been stopped once. Obviously the appearance of a middle class white IT worker from Central Casting means I don't look like a stoner with some take-away weed on the way back from Amsterdam (my most frequent embarcation point before arriving into the UK).

I've gone through the red channel half a dozen times to declare things in the 8 years, but in each case HMRC didn't go through my bags, they just asked what I had got - and on half the occasions they let me off paying any duty even though I was over the dutiable limit. One was a couple of hundred quid on a camera lens, I think they couldn't quite believe I was declaring a lens bought weeks earlier near the start of a round the world trip in HKG and taken around the world, to return on a flight from LAX. "Sir, since you have no other items to declare, you may take this as your duty free allowance and thank you for your honesty".

Most other customs people don't seem too interested in me either, I've had the usual going-over by the New Zealanders for their bio-security regime, and a somewhat bemused Japanese customs official another time. The USA haven't looked at me either, except the time I had something to declare - flower bulbs with an appropriate phytosanitary certificate. The bulbs were fine, but they x-rayed my bag and asked me pointedly "Do you have any fruit or vegetables? No fruit at all? No oranges, apples?". They were giving me a chance to confess before they opened my bags to find .... Lush Bath Bombs

Overall I like the fact that the UK customs people don't make you queue up pointlessly with forms and so on, while still doing a reasonable job of enforcement.

callum9999

I've only been stopped once coming into the UK, and then when I told them I was a UK citizen half way through unzipping my bag they suddenly closed it again and said I could go.

While I'm white, I was very tanned at the time and the airport was in a backwards UKIP stronghold (now infamous for rejecting Farage). It could have been random, but putting two and two together...

FN-GM

I got stopped in the car coming back into the uk on the channel tunnel and that's about it.

Loads of times I have been through customs at MAN and not a customs officer in sight!

GUWonder

Unlucky? It depends.

I consider myself lucky and I've been selected for somewhat extensive customs searches maybe 0.3% of my international trips. At my pattern of travel, one in five years is pretty lucky. For other patterns of travel, one such search in five years may be somewhat unlucky.

GUWonder

They do "random searches" in that most of the unknown-passenger-selected searches are part of wild fishing expeditions that mostly hit people whom are not running afoul of customs rules. But they aren't really "random" in the mathematical sense of random. Many of the previously-unknown-passenger-selected searches are route-related or generally immutable demographic-characteristic-based.

The specified (known) passenger targeting for customs searches based on advanced intelligence come with jetbridge/gate-area interdiction, monitoring from the gate or earlier (pre-deplaning) specific details. Most customs searches in the LON airports are not of this nature.

stockmanjr

Two years ago I was flying NRT-FRA-LCY. I was exhusted as the flight was delayed leaving NRT,and upon arriving into LCY the Green Channel was roped off. Instead of asking a member of staff for advice I stupidly decided to walk through the EU channel, and of course got stopped. Thankfully the agent was friendly and let me go after a few minutes with a warning to ask next time. Only time I've been pulled over entering the UK.
Cheers
Howie

Calchas

Does it matter?

I always just use the nearest blue or green channel

I'm such a rebel teenage me would be so proud

callum9999

Surely it would matter, as if you walk through the Blue Channel you are effectively making a false customs declaration?

Of course, if no-one stops you then it doesn't matter!

marlborobell

Going through the blue channel with checked bags tagged without green stripes is a pretty big giveaway. That's the whole reason the green stripes exist.

stut

Of course, if you're hand luggage only, it wouldn't necessarily be obvious...