We had a miserable experience at VCE yesterday. We planned to check our bags on the flight to London, but the line was hopelessly long and not moving at all, 2 hours ahead of the flight time. It appeared there was only one person working the check-in counter. After waiting without progress for 25 minutes, we decided to re-pack into cabin baggage only, and go straight to security with our boarding passes. This meant discarding a number of items including hiking poles, but it seemed preferable to missing the flight.

I am hoping the situation at Heathrow will not be as bad for our flight home to the US two days from now. We will be flying in Club World on a flight departing mid-afternoon, so should at least be able to use the priority check-in line if there is one. Even with all our API submitted and accepted, I doubt we will be able to get our boarding passes for a US-bound flight ahead to time; even pre-covid we have been unable to do that.

Can anyone advise as to what to expect? Should we allow more than 3 hours before our flight? Are the BA lounges miserably crowded these days?

Thanks for your help, as always.