There are a lot of airports that are worse than LHR when it comes to immigration, but I don't think it helps at all to point out those. Maybe better to look at all the airports that do immigration better than Heathrow for inspiration. Like every other airport in the European Union.

I was coming through Terminal 4 arrivals on Friday night from the slightly delayed AF flight from Paris at 1815.

The non-EU queue appeared long. There were only 3 people serving the EU queue.

However, in a show of utmost vulgarity, there was a vile UK Border Agency person at the entrance to the EU line who appeared much more concerned about people taking photos. He even saw some poor Italian girl holding a purple camera in her hand and basically grabbed it off her to look at her pictures. What a low life.

I complained via email to the UK BA (I clearly had time) but I have no expectation of it going anywhere nor am I going to dedicate the time to pursue it. But it had to be said.

Thankfully the queue was only actually about 20 minutes long.

The one thing I have to say about the US as well, is when the line starts getting long, more agents start appearing at once. It may take a while to process, but at least you see them trying to cope. I never have waited an hour to find 2-3 guys working the queue.

Is it illegal for a UK newspaper to publish photographs of the long queues?

Today at T5, Flight Connections queues appeared to be worse than the immigration queues.

The BA staff members were very strictly guarding the Fast Track FC queues, for which I was thankful.

I would hope not. A lot of photographs of the insane lines at T3 in the late evening would do it well.

Those lines are a good enough reason for me to try to avoid the daytime TATL flights from the US to LHR as much as I can.

The last time I arrived at BOS, they did the opposite, just shut down desks, as two long-hauls arrived. When I arrived, there were about 6 or 7 manned desks, when I got down to the front of the queue (and I was in C, so the two long-haul passengers were mostly behind me), some 20 minutes later, there were only 3.

That would be great if done. FLUX is already adding two more programs to the existing GE/ Privium alliance:

Canadian CANPASS and Korean SES.

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/...06132012_2.xml

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/prog/canp...ssair-eng.html

:rolleyes: I guess you never transfer at IAD, they never have more than 2 desk open for nonUSt, and if it get really busy, they would even ask US citizen to join the non US queue. I have seen it multiple time when I use to fly *A for connection to SYR, most of the time I am just relax knowing there's nothing I cando apart from rebook a later flight.
Why most airport have over 20 immigation desk when I never see them open more than half? :p

Last time I came into IAD was the shortest amount of time I have ever waited for immigration in the US. There were 8 or 9 desks open for foreigners. And I didn't even get barked at by the TSA coming back.

Long queues at T5 border control
 

My tactic (and for those of you who are TP crazy like me) is to fly into slightly quieter airports where possible... LAS/SFO/DEN instead of LAX directly, for example. Or MCO instead of MIA... Sadly, the northeast is a bit of a problem area, but I much prefer JFK to EWR...

As an IAD victim I vaguely agree. But not completely … ;)

The new International Arrivals Building (IAB) has 50 desks … whenever we arrive [just after 1300] there are usually 10 manned. That's 6 for US pax, one for Crew, and 3 or 4 for Foreigners. I can only assume that they built the desks before discovering they couldn't recruit, or pay for, the staff needed to work there?

In fairness, our last trip in May saw us being fed to the US Citizen desks once the 'locals' had been taken care of. Overall wait time, maybe 30 minutes. We have done it in less that 10, and then actually had to wait 2 minutes for our bags to arrive on the carousel!! Again, being fair to IAD, it used to take nearly an hour.

Oh, and the 'interesting' broadcast announcement again … "Overtime has been authorised" … at lunchtime? Interesting work-pattern, especially when they know when the International flights are arriving.

I have been to IAD only once, and didn't have much of a wait at all. Might have just gotten lucky

A good point in general, although my MCO experience has been poor as of late - BA routinely arrive after VS and thus even if the front of the BA queue you still have hundreds of folk in front of you! :td:

I've flown into PHL a dozen or so times recently and immigration has been an absolute breeze on each occasion. I've never had to wait behind more than one person in a queue, and every time I've been waiting at the baggage carousel before the first bags emerged from the aircraft.

PHL seems not to have too many international arrivals (at least around the time the two BA flights arrive) and always appears to have plenty of CBP officers on duty. They are usually very pleasant and courteous as well.