I arrived at LHR T1 for 0600 this morning, no queue at the F checkin but the security queue was hotting up. A couple of weeks ago I got there for 0630 and it was terrible, traffic backed up along the spur road, queues to the drop off point at T1 and security queues, so I vowed to get up a bit earlier and get there before 0600 - seemed to work over the last few Mondays.
I think we were there at almost the same time this morning. They did actually open up the second scanner just as I got to the front of the queue, which allowed Ms I'm Going To Barge Past To Join New Scanner Queue In Front Of You But Then Spend Forever Faffing Around to barge past to join the new scanner queue in front of me only to then spend forever faffing around with her stuff. I was caught off guard because I truly believed that the second scanner was just a dummy prop
I find turning up before 0600 to be a reasonably good way of avoiding queues (unlike T2 where there seems to be some sort of perma-queue in operation)
I note they've changed the way that the F checkin merges now - there's a rope barrier preventing you joining right at the front, but you can walk back along it a bit and join there. Except that nobody emerging from F this morning knew what to do and bemusedly wandered back to the tail of the queue. maybe that's the aim, I dunno.