AM

You won't go through passport control until you get to FCO.

Your wait will be 0 minutes as unlike the US, the UK does not force transit passengers through immigration and customs (unless they are in transit to another UK airport, Ireland or the Channel Islands or need to recheck bags).

Hmmm. Or maybe not. Yesterday when I came through T5 at about 1pm, they were making transit pax queue. And, somewhat confusingly it was in the same tensabarrier pen that I have queued in before for immigration. There were few BAA people about and they were doing a really poor job of giving pax information and marshalling people to the right place.

Actually immigration wasn't too bad - IRIS was working and even with the obligatory unregistered numpty I was through in just a few minutes. BAA really need to come up a consistent strategy and better signage, though. It just frustrates pax otherwise. I would imagine that being a non-English speaker yesterday would have been doubly confusing.

Came through T5 at 5.30 this morning. EU automated gates and both IRIS lanes closed - don't they know better by now (answer not required).

I came through LAX security yesterday, and (as UK passport holder) had to join the long visitors' queue. However as soon as the US citizen lines had cleared, they quickly moved us over to those desks and the line cleared quite quickly. Any idea why such an obviously sensible system couldn't be implemented at LHR? (other than that the current layout doesn't lend itself to it, which is easily fixed).

Is there additional training required for the non-EU desk agents as against the EU agents? If not, then there is no reason. Ireland already accepts EU people at the non-EU desk when the non-EU desk has cleared (and in Ireland, the EU queue is longer).

Probably because at LHR the EU citizen lines rarely if ever clear... :(

Arriving ex YYZ last year at LGW, after the EU passengers had all cleared non EU passenger overflow was processed at the EU desks.

I have also taken my non-EU wife through EU desks before with no issue. So not sure it's a training/competency issue, though I may be wrong!

So long as it is "family" it seems to be ok to do this. Whether it is official or not who knows.

When I arrived at T5 this morning there were no queues at all. :)

Looks like the problem's 'solved'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012...staff-olympics
And if the phrase "475 trained volunteers" doesn't worry you, it should.

Wonderful ... HMG solves issues for the Olympics? And what about the rest of it? :(

Sadly at 10:30am the queues were snaking along the terminal. Iris was closed, but no queue at E gates. It appeared that the queue was either for transit pax, or non eu, as they were keeping the EU area clear to reach. I approached from the other side of the queue, so its quite possible that those approaching the queue would assume they needed to join it, not realising that with an EU passport, they could walk straight through to join the (short) EU queue.

Sunday evening just gone (20/5) the queue at 9pm in T5 was approx 15-20 mins on the EU gates. The queue from the pen looked worse, but it moved quite quickly.