Originally Posted by
ffay005
My passport was issued in January this year, and in March, I did not get through the automated gates at LHR.
Arriving from HEL, there were quite a few of us Finns who had problems with the gates. Still, the agents wanted me to try two different gates before relenting. I dislike automated gates since even when working, they are so much slower than a human. But at LHR, you don't really have a choice – either you queue with all the Indians and Pakistanis, which takes forever, or then you queue to the e-gates, play with them for a while to make the agents happy and then get to see a human being.
Huh?? Why would you queue with Indians at LHR unless they were EU citizens in which case it will take just as long as anyone else.
At LHR you can ignore anybody dressed in purple and go to any counter you please.