Originally Posted by Gatwick Alan
The purpose behind it used to be that domestic passengers could mix with people arriving from "dirty" countries. Since LGW has now completed the segregation of arriving international passengers, and the new domestic arrivals baggage belt is also sgregated from departing passengers (in case someone opened up a suitcase and handed over something like scissors to a departing passenger) there seems to be liitle point in keeping the system.
I agree with this - I suspect that the system once had real value but although maybe now it doesn't, any perceived security downgrading would be politically unacceptable in the current climate. I use Gatwick all the time and I can't think of a bad scenario that this would prevent.
Having said that, I have never been held up by the system and I think
fbgdavidson was rather unlucky in his experience.
The downside for pax is potentially in dom-dom transfers; not that many of them at LGW but you'd not be able to use the lounges without going landside and back in to get photographed.