Originally Posted by
binman
I am afraid I have to disagree with you. IMO the U.K. border checks at Heathrow rank as some of the worst in the world. I genuinely hate arriving here even with a British passport. It’s inefficient and overly intrusive and aggressive.
The E gates don’t demand to know where you have come from, the purpose of your journey or, as happened on Monday where I was going having arrived home. So yes, there is additional scrutiny and questioning and it does add time and consequently frustration and delays to everyone. Questions incidentally that are answered by the APIS data provided by the inbound carrier all before my flight took off. The questions are therefore unnecessary and intrusive and simply slow things down.
I find it's really quite variable. On one occasion the UK border force agent did not even say a single word to me, he just swiped my passport, tapped a few keys and handed it back. On another occasion I was quizzed for a few minutes on where I'd been, where I live in the UK, how long I've lived there for, what I do for a job, etc.