DYKWIA

I'm currently going back and forth between MAN and AMS on a weekly basis.

Departing and arriving at AMS is a bit hit and miss, sometimes you are through passport control in seconds, other times the queue is huge. This is both on departures and arrivals.

I recently purchased a Privium card on a 3 month trial for EUR79 (EUR205 a year after that). This is a card sold by Schiphol Airport and is aimed at frequent flyers through AMS. It gives the following benefits :-

- IRIS scan passport control via a dedicated lane (departures and arrivals). There's never anyboy else queuing.
- Fastrack Security
- Access to a nice lounge. Although it's landside, it never takes more than 10 minutes to get airside.
- Priority parking

It makes the whole AMS experience quite pleasant.

So, if Heathrow were to introduce something similar, I wonder how it would sell?

chistery

Well it was called Iris, it worked well, so they got rid of it.

techie

Is passport control still an issue for UK holders @ Heathrow arrivals? I know a group of people grumbled about IRIS going away, but the increased quantity of e-gates seem to keep things flowing.

When it comes to departures, I have long been in favour of a Pre-Check-like system in the UK and am willing to pay for it. But that seems far too sensible to gain traction...

DYKWIA

It's more than IRIS though. A dedicated lane away from the masses HAL would need to make sure it was kept queue free to ensure people kept paying their subscription fee. With the current setup, HAL couldn't really give two hoots if BA premium passengers are kept waiting for an hour, as BA won't be going anywhere soon.

DYKWIA

It's terrible for people who want to transfer to domestic. The savvy will go out through the e-gates and back in. But wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to bother?

Markie

Most of the times I am in T5 only half the gates are working and the staff can never explain why. Honestly after Brexit removes free-movement and the EU citizens go to the non-UK queue it'll all be OK again.

MNManInKen

I have no idea how well it would sell, but I certainly would sign up.

I agree, the ePassport experience at T5 has gone downhill quite badly. As a typical example lately: there were substantial queues on Tuesday, yet only about half of the gates were in use.

corporate-wage-slave

Gatwick has a Premium Arrivals and Passport facility, which they kindly gave me to trial by way of disclosure for my next sentence. It allows people to jump the passport queue on arrivals (which for all the whinging about T5, is in a different ball game altogether over in LGW). One approaches a GAL member at the entrance of the UK Border area and they walk you to the front of the queue. It's now available on a per use basis, £12.50, or £10 for registered LGW passengers. UK, EEA and non EEA can all use this facility. My pass also allows Fast Track into LGW but normal security is almost always faster there.

Going into T5 is generally faster than AMS, normally the e-gates out are fast and I rarely need more than 3 minutes to get through T5 security. If Privium was on offer AND covered UK Flight Connections then I would be more excited at the prospect. The problem we often see here is that while the extremes pop up once in a while for T5, whereas generally getting in and out of T5 has improved a lot over the last 2 years. T3 should get better too when the new e-gates open there in about 3 weeks time.

MNManInKen

This used to be my experience too, but (accepting I don't travel remotely as much as you do) in the last few months I've found the experience far less good, with long queues and only some of the machines in action. This is somewhat ironic, because in the early days when there were only a few ePassport gates I tended to breeze through them!

Jonrross

After arriving on one of the first flights of the day into T5 to find only 5 e-gates open I asked the Border Force lady supervising the queue (not sure why she was doing this as it's usually a HAL person). She explained that the e-gates are supervised from a back room with 1 human / 5 gates. Someone had overslept that day and not turned up to work yet. I asked if this was like some overseas call centre, but she assured me they were just the other side of the wall! I'm still confused as to why she was supervising the queue when she could have gone to the back room and opened another 5 gates.

MNManInKen

Based on how often a set of gates is out of action, they may want to invest in some good quality alarm clocks for the staff...

the_real_a

Do the new gates still run on windows XP ?

N1120A

Heathrow Fast Track is an absolute joke. Half the time, you wait at least half an hour to clear. I don't see why they don't integrate into GE, like has been done at ICN, AMS, FRA, SYD and MEL. UK passports can now get GE, so why not reciprocate.



Ain't that the truth.

FFMilesJunkie

You can apply as a GE member to the UK trusted traveler program and get access to the E-gates.

More info: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-t...er/us-citizens

lhrsfo

Departure security works well in T2. I've only had to wait more than 5 minutes once in the Star Gold section and that was when one line broke and they had to open another. Still only ten minutes max.

For arrival there's obviously no priority line but again it always seems quite fast in the UK line.