Originally Posted by
allturnleft
You think its going to be s breeze as they have the ESTA machines; but then you have to queue to check your print out from the machine with an official. This is very slow
There are huge banks of machines but afterwards you are directed to a queue and I think there must be more than one as we waited ages whilst others from our plane got through before us
I went in the queue at the far end of the room may be others can say whether there is a preferred exit
That describes how it has been recently. Last time I came through (8 December, early afternoon, coming off BA 283) I got my printout in less than 2 minutes then queued for 50 mins to have it checked. Choosing the apparently shortest queue is pointless. It's just a law of nature that the one you choose is always the slowest. It helps if you're mentally prepared for a wait. I read a book while waiting. It's not all wasted time because if you breeze through immigration you'd have to wait at the other side for the luggage to come through.