Preichers

Ever since Easter each of my business trips (2 or 3 week) has ended in 10-20 min queuing in Heathrow. And that is for ISIS (when lucky enough that it is open) or for the e-Gates. Looking at T5 on a normal day:
- 20 BAA staff organise queues
- 3 boarder agency staff look after the three eGates, which are very slow to clear people
- 3 staff man the EU passport manual checks
- ISIS is shut
- 3 people for our poor overseas relations
I am not an operational research specialist, but moving three eGates staff to EU/overseas and opening ISIS would be so much more efficient.
And yes, I signed up to the ePetition.

WineList

20:00 in T5 tonight was a joke. Got the train from T5C, up the lift and out to a controlled queue stretching, no kidding 100m beyond it. Everyone forced to walk to the back of the queue - even Iris pleadings met with "..to the back of the queue".

I think 1.5hrs would have been a reasonable estimate for the wait. I would say the queue dragons were doing the worst job in the world, but very well and took no excuses - well they couldn't could they without chaos?

Non-EU passport holders were asked to join the relevant, long, queue ahead and I was looking for some lookalike to offer to buy theirs, but no luck.

Then, a crackly voice over the queue manager radios "...Iris queues are empty...", and then, like a call-to-duty, FTers from amongst the throng emerged and with the chant of, "I'm Iris [note to others: add the appropriate point-to-eye re-inforcement], let me through!", marched to the front.

My advice to those Iris registered: ignore the 'join the queue' prompts and head forward and take the shortcut - insist on it becuase if not, you'll be queueing for a long time and, unlike Disney, there's no joy at the end..

Frankly UKBA, sort it out - 8 staff - a joke.

Rajah

Just got in on 401 from BRU, on time flight, no wait getting into LHR, about 40 min flying time... and about the same queuing... Not Pleased (though still lucky compared to some off the experiences reported)

Skipcool3

RAJAH.... so you spend as long waiting in line (40mins) as you spent on the flight and you count yourself lucky

It really is time to say enough is enough. GAWD!!!!

Kuchen

Yeah, it took 40 mins total... Which is so much better than I thought when I saw the queue through the window as we taxied up to the gate.

I guess that would be why I felt 20mins wasn't so bad.

All the gates were manned, so they were doing as much as they could to rectify the problems... The guy checking my passport said he was from Customs downstairs, so they must have got extra people u to help clear the backlog (which doesn't excuse them for not having enough personnel in place to prevent the mammoth queue building up in the first place)

HilFly

This must be so hard on those travelling with small children or people who can't stand for that length of time.

Are they doing anything to help these people?

FlyingWeasel

On BBC News website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17876496

WHBM

The Home Office ministers seem to think that if they just parrot out "We will not compromise border security" every 30 seconds everyone will just go along with them. The fact that they appear to have halved or worse the number of immigration officers on duty, however, surely points to the fact that they actually have done something that DOES compromise the security.

How many desks in T5 are there ? There seem to be 3 + 3 officers typically on duty currently, but I seem to recall about 20 or more positions. How many officers were on duty this time last year ? Who suddenly halved the number on duty ? The numbers skulking round at the back doing nothing at any given time, however, seem to have stayed the same.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if David Cameron was known to be coming through, every single desk would be manned.

BAHumbug

Regrettably very little. At one stage they were handing out bottles of water to people in the queues last night but I genuinely felt for people with young children.

As I mentioned earlier, it's disgusting and makes me ashamed that this is the sort of welcome the UK provides at what is supposed to be it's premier terminal at it's premier entry point.

Perhaps Mrs May would like to get her kitten heels out and queue for a couple of hours with 2 small children to see how she likes it.

BAH

(and, finally, I agree with HilFly - that should really underscore how serious this situation is !!)

Swanhunter

This has been building for many months - while sad it has got to this stage I am pleased that action may finally be taken.

SteelCityBoy

Agreed. And in spite of the inconvenience of the queues and bad PR before the Olympics I do feel for the IOs who must be facing increased pressure and workload.

Arguably this will affect border and immigration security as they are only human and in the long run the quality of checks and decision making must suffer.

Stez

Joy of joys. Looking forward to experiencing this in a few days coming off the kangaroo route at 5am.

That old choice again.... go landside at T3 and take the train to T5 or stick to airside connections to T5 when one or both will be bad.

Fruitcake

I think they came into office thinking government would be easy and they could just do whatever they wanted with the deficit as an excuse for anything. This arrogance is now catching up with them. I think the border queues are an appalling advert for our country and show real discourtesy to our own people and visitors.

From me, that's quite strong - but I'm disappointed with everything that's going wrong with the government at the moment. Poor show.

speedbird66

I'm becoming increasingly irritated by the lack of comment from either Ms May or Damian Green on the issue: it almost seems like the attitude is "if we don't acknoweldge that a problem exists then we don't have to deal with it".

FenLandK

Well, it certainly isn't consistently bad, as I breezed through at about 7pm to a zero-length IRIS queue. Expecting the worst, as per last week, but pleasantly surprised. However, I'm sure it was just pot luck. The non-EU queue still looked pretty bad. Is it just as a result of cuts, or is someone trying to make a point?