Originally Posted by catandmouse

Most of my experience with T5 is as a transfer passenger. It's actually rare for me to use the landside of T5.
To others who queried, all transfer passengers use North security. However the process is a real shambles and as you go through it, you have the distinct feeling that no-one calculated how transfer passengers might flow through the process.
It starts off by the conformance check at the extreme right of the immigration hall. There is a fast-track for this, but doesn't really change much. You then snake through a couple of bends of these flexible belts, past some barkers, who are ignored by everyone. You reach two escalators, of which only one is ever working. At the top you land in a zone, where you meet the lucky passengers coming in from landside to North security. I guess health and safety have never visited this zone. My understanding is that at the end of escalators, you are obliged to ensure that people move away from the machine for safety reasons. You can't do this at the top of the flight connection escalators as you have to merge with the landside pax coming in, the shufflers who don't know what they're doing and there's really no space to cope with the crowds. It's an accident waiting to happen. You then have to fight your way through the madding crowd to Fast-Track, to discover either that it isn't operating, or that it's in reality a Slow-Track.
Welcome to T5 Flight Connections and North Security.