The UK used to have exit controls where they stamped your passport when you left the country.
The logic was that it was only going to pick up people who overstayed their visa when they were leaving the country, so you might as well let them leave anyway instead of detaining them further. If someone was overstaying their visa, immigration would have to detect them while they were still in the UK, not when they were leaving the country anyway. So what is the benefit of stamping passport when people leave. As usual, it is a cost benefit issue.
From time to time, the exit immigration controls come back in when there was heightened security at the airport. I suspect that was checking people going airside as oppose to people leaving the country.
T3 is the only terminal where there is a high frequency of the immigration exit desks being manned. T2 has the desks but rarely manned. No desk at T1 for BA entrance nor at T4 or T5.
Originally Posted by
londonbound86
although while I was waiting in line to check in a guy with a portable desk came by and slid my passport and then placed a sticker on that said ITCS I believe....
That would be VS not BA. For some strange reason, VS pay a separate firm to check pax visa requirements for travel. VS staff do not do this. Once my sticker came off and I was not allowed to board at the gate until they got the non-VS agent to recheck my visa and put a new sticker on my passport. Weird. Talk about a job creation scheme. I suspect the agency pays if VS lands a pax with no right of entry to a country and VS has to fly the pax back to the UK. Cost of recovering cost of return flight from the pax is with the agency.
Nothing to do with UK immigration.