hyperspace

Quick question.
We recently had such a bad experience at UK border as arriving from LAX with our 16 month old twins we had to wait about 1.5 hours before an immigration officer finally let us through.
The lines to the border were insanely long while pretty much nobody was queueing at the connection booths.
If a similar situation should happen again and let's say we arrive around 7pm and we have a connecting flight the day after at 10am, could we use the flight connection booths even if we'd get out of the airport and head to the sofi hotel for the night?

craigthemif

You need to clear UK immigration and customs to stay at the Sofitel, which is landside.

I'm not sure what you mean by connection booths. Connecting passengers don't need to go through passport control, because you can't get landside from the departures lounge. (this is different from US airports where domestic and international passengers are not separated and so one could just walk outside - therefore the need for all connecting passengers to pass through US passport control)

Perhaps somebody will come along with a trick involving a UK or Ireland connecting flight but I'm not aware of anything that would save time...

dylanks

If T5 immigration is backed up, you could try your luck by taking flight connections to T2 or T3 and hope for a shorter queue, and then take the tube or heathrow express train to T5 for the Sofitel.

I'm not sure if there's any sort of real-time border wait time data that would allow you to compare wait times between terminals, but unless the queue is very long, it's probably faster to just clear at T5.

UKtravelbear

not sure what this has to do with BA or what happens in the US but basically you will have to clear the UK border.

Connections is of no help to you as your onward flight isn't until the next day.

Plus the connections area is different from the 'enter the UK' area so it is highly unlikely you saw any 'connection booths'

You may have seen the e-gates but they are not open to non UK (and I think EU) passengers.

UKtravelbear

except that won't work if the OP has luggage to collect.

antichef

I think the OP is talking about being in the T5 UK Border area on the right of the booths to go landside, and seeing the "connections booths" of the UK Border Force which are adjacent on the left in the Flight Connections area.

The answer is as already given - those booths are channelled so that you go back into the airside at T5 so are no use to you. You have to go landside to get to the Sofitel.

If you have to collect luggage you can only exit at T5, as you cannot get back to the luggage area from landside.

If you had checked through luggage and only hand baggage you could take a chance and go to T2 or T3 using the flight connections airside bus as suggested by dylanks above.

Scots_Al

Yes they do if connecting to a domestic flight! And domestic pax are NOT separated from international pax at T5 at all!

However, you wouldn't be allowed to go through that channel as you wouldn't have a boarding pass for that day (and T5 closes overnight).

IAN-UK

I reckon those clever folk designing the border have been through every permutation of arrival and destination The maze of tensa-barriers and control points certainly suggest this is the case.

For the OP, it boils down to the need to enter the UK and so having to cross the border, rather than skirt round it.

Custardthecat

Custardthecat

You should clear immigration in the Terminal you arrive at unless you have to transfer to a domestic flight

antichef

You don't have to, and dylanks was pointing out a way that some of us use if the queues are really backed up. It only works if you have no luggage to collect though, as then you do have to clear in the terminal you arrive at.

The same applies to using flight connections, whilst the system flow is for you to use the FCC, most of the time the quickest route is a landside connection at T5 if you have the right to use the epassport gates.

Custardthecat

Custardthecat

Even if you have no checked baggage I believe it is the case that unless specifically directed otherwise you are not allowed by the authorities to do this. In other words you are not normally allowed to land at T5 if you arrived at T2 unless you are transferring to a domestic flight airside. Whilst you may be doing it I dont think its allowed.

hyperspace

Thank You All forthright many replies and apologize for posting in the BA forum and not in here.
To clarify I understand now that my supposed "workaround" would have not worked because the connecting flight is the day after and the booths At connections only check passport if connecting to domestic anyways (did I get this right from your posts?) and I would be flying international again.
Others have suggested to go to other terminals but that wouldn't work either because of checked luggage to be picked up at T5.
Anyways, pretty reticulos that the passport control "fast track" only had two booths working with a queue of about two hours. Even if I didn't have twins screaming at my ears, id be pissed.
Overheard an immigration officer trying to calm down complaining passengers saying that "BA doesn't pay them enough to man more booths and that's their fault this situations occur". Might just be airport gossip


Other quick question. Since we have one EU passport and three non-Eu passports and we are a family, could we have just gone into the EU queue instead?

dylanks

If you do this frequently, the three of you could join the Registered Traveler scheme, which is sort of like Global Entry without TSA PreCheck, and it's a few time more expensive than global entry. You may then use the EU e-passport area (though I don't recall if there's a minimum age for this... I think there was but now it's open to all ages?).

Also, I would say it's no coincidence that the introduction of this program happened at the same time that the number of fast track agents was reduced to two at T5, with no efforts to expand the fast track throughout at all.