Long queues at T5 border control
 

Just had a message from my brother, who arrived off BA206 in F

"Just landed but still queuing for border control and have been 1hr 15m already - absolute farce! They have no idea what they're doing and queues are backing up fast"

I guess people are arriving back at the end of the Easter holidays but even so..... Anyone else seeing similar today?

Can I encourage people with smartphones to post pictures of the queues, ideally with a date/time stamp.

Ta.

Oh great. I'm due to land at this evening 19:15 and have dinner in the WE at 20:30.:rolleyes:

According to a couple of my colleagues there have been a few periods in the last few days where UKBA waiting times have been quite lengthy. I choose to fly from AMS to LPL on easyJet on Wednesday and from leaving the plane to sitting in my car was just 9 minutes - that was a first!

My colleague who went to LHR from AMS wasn't so lucky ...

Thanks. Normally just carry baby in my arms but I will fish the carrier out of the suitcase before I check in in a couple of mins. Might try and keep pushchair with me if there's space.

20:30 tomorrow, and you may just make it :(

Remember that at the moment we are still in the morning arrivals bank for LHR.

All the USA flights and many from other places have been arriving in the past couple of hours.

And following easter this will be peak of the peak time for UK Border.

Probably by 19:15 it will have calmed down! :)

I arrived into T3 at 7pm on Tuesday and there was not a soul at Border Control (other than staff of course!). There are peaks and troughs, sometimes you're lucky, sometimes not.

What difference does the class of travel (F in this case) make once the passenger is off the plane and caught up in the general stampede towards immigration control?

Poor show though when someone's spent £10k on a ticket to avoid the hassle of travel, you'd think that BA could provide a private transfer to a private immigration area.

There's the fast-track immigration line for non-EUs, and ever-dependable Iris, but if the queues are back to the lifts you presumably can't get to them even if they were working

Well if the OP's brother is a non-EU citizen they should be able to use the fast-track if they are in F.
The class of travel also makes a difference how quickly you get off the plane, so the people in WT on this flight would have had an even longer wait at imigration! (Unless you run to immigration past the other PAX)

Just came through T3 off the BA699 and got through the EU lanes in about 5 minutes. But I was talking to one of the girls that marshalls the queues and she said between 05:00 and 06:30 this morning the non-EU lanes had typical waits of around 2hrs 30mins.

There was the same yesterday afternoon, arrived 3pm and directed 300M down to the end of the que.
About 30-40mins just to be allowed in to the arrivals area, thankfully IRIS was on and only 2 people waiting. No idea how much time it was taking to get through the passport checks.

I will be sad when IRIS is turned off, just so easy to use.

I landed at 6:30 am into T5 and the queue was out of the hall where the immigration staff sit and down to the end of the terminal. 45 minutes later when I eventually got to the border hall entrance the queue was already doubled back on it'self. The wait must have been well over an hour from there.

The reason...only 4 desks open for EU passport holders, plus one for rejected e-passports! We've had over a week of hype about this in the press, how can the UK border agency not work out that this weekend would be just as busy and actually put staff on the desks?

Good luck to anyone arriving later today. I'll try and download the pics from my phone in a bit

I am with paulwuk on this. BA should pay for construction of a special immigration channel for F passengers at T5.

If travelling in F I do not see why you should have to dash to be first off the plane. You should instead be able to linger a bit, sorting out your cabin baggage and getting your bits and pieces together after landing rather than before. But immigration pressures prevent this.

no / minimum queues at 9.15 this morning

Good luck.. this is when the usual refusal to bring buggies to the door of the aircraft at LHR can really bite. Carrying a baby / infant to baggage reclaim is bad enough - holding them in your arms for over an hour in the immigration queue is just unacceptable.

Not sure which airport I was in recently which seems to lend out buggies to parents airside - AMS or ARN. I do wish LHR could do the same.

Back on topic, half term in February also had 90 minute+ queues for EU at LHR at 10pm. Luckily our kids are now older and could cope but some of the parents with smaller children were having real problems :(

I've got to agree with this. Last August I arrived at T4 having flown EY F AUH-LHR, with hand luggage only.

A wonderful AUH F lounge, a great EY F flight, and a complimentary BMW transfer to Dorset was totally spoiled by a 45 minute immigration queue at T4 - it was like a rugby scrum.

As a Brit I'm frankly ashamed with some of LHR's operational aspects - it makes the UK look very much second-rate in comparison to some other countries (although the US can be just as bad!).

45 minutes ain't bad, once was @ JFK and the line was getting longer and longer, imo it almost reached the plane. I asked the immigration officer how long before everyone gets processed, he looked and said around 2 hrs, when I had an astonished look on my face, he said once during the summer it was 5 hours. When I said that it really is very embarrassing for a first world country to have 3 world service, he said that they were cutting down on employees with no plans to hire again.... Shame.

Or Holding the non US citizen to process only the US passport as I saw it once.
I was at the begining of the queue looking at the arrival hall for 1H30, near a TSA agent who was letting in only US passport and US resident (they where then using the line they wanted). They finaly released us and let us use some of the US resident line. Such a nice gesture.

Was not the time I faced a "friendly" alcohol smelling agent, who had his head falling on his desk and start snoring, before waking up again and again.
But this is a diferent story.

You know what drives me nuts? The utter bollocks UKBA is peddling about IRIS not working and being a waste - arrived off the 286 yesterday just after 1pm and the queues were massive for the UK/EU line. Not as bad as the pics here recently snaking back all the way along T5A but basically about full in the actual border area. Two IRIS machines, both working, I was out in under 30 seconds not minutes. It's a total travesty that they're scrapping it.

My best arrival ever into T5 remains the day the useless UKBA were on strike last year :rolleyes:

I can assure you that on Tuesday morning the early am (6:30-7:00) it was terrible and took 1 hour to get through the EU bit....

FD

That wasn't Shannon was it? The last time I went through on the LCY JFK route, the agent had clearly been on some massive lash the night before. Stunk of booze, red eyes, head on his hand.

Quite so. I expect the only feedback they're getting is from the unregistered kettles who try to use it.

No JFK but exactly the same behaviour. He did not even say one word, only pointing and showing various set of fingers, but this is not uncommon.

Hello britbronco22,

I totally agree with you when you say "the class of travel also makes a difference how quickly you get off the plane", but that's the extent of the carrier's responsibility IMO.

I travelled JFK-LHR in F a couple of weeks ago, and yes, I disembarked first. However, because of temporary disability I walk very slowly and so I arrived at UKBF immigration a lot later than most of my "fellow travellers".

Could I then have insisted that I be allowed to jump all the queues, on the somewhat specious grounds that I was a first class passenger? If I did, I could imagine the gauntlet I would then have to run!

You'd be surprised at how much responsibility a carrier can take. Checking in as a BD*G in AKL, I was given a priority card to use for immigration and customs in Sydney (and that was great). I'm guessing the airlines that give their passengers these cards pay to do so.

It's the same in ZRH and FRA if you're travelling *A and have status (or class of travel) - priority everything.

Here is an idea.

When there are massive queues at T5 can you get the bus to another terminal and go through immigration there?

Let alone that it is a total travesty that they're scrapping it, but why only two? We should have ranks of them - at least 20. Then when 1 breaks, the redundancy is not reduced to 0%! - Take a look a Schipol.

Neither BA (in their terminal), UKBA, nor BAA want to accept responsibility, but it incenses me when I am in F, that I cannot use any kind of priority line. The passport readers are useless (the new EU machines), take a look at Helsinki.....

As for the fast track non-EU queue - BA are doing a disservice to their F and J EU passport holders, because the UKBA agents will allow an EU passport to go to a non-EU desk, it is BA who are preventing us from using the fast-track.....

Bodes well for the Olympics, then.

Or maybe they'll have Olympic immigration lanes at LHR for the "VIPs".

A bit farcical that UKBA laid off a bunch of border officials recently, only to have to re-employ _and_ retrain new ones.

Agreed regarding F and J EU nationals' immigration with or without the Olympics. It's the weakest link in the chain. You've blown $10k on a ticket, been treated to a level of service that many look on in awe and envy, only to be chucked into a steaming pot at the other end. Rather a let down after all that brown nosing. Same applies to baggage reclaim.

Also agreed re the IRIS system, although finding an IRIS office open to register has always been rather difficult.

Cheers, Howard

Came in today at T5 around 9.45. Queue didn't look too horrific but I did use Fastrack with a non-EU person so was through in no time. Baggage was on the belt by the time that we got to the baggage claim. Reports of fog meant some planes came in a little late but the fog cleared very quickly so instead of possibly going to Manchester we did come in to Heathrow. I would agree generally though that the EU lanes are slow and apparently you can't register for IRIS any more. Do they have e-passport gates?

Yes, if you have no checked baggage.

Last time I went through they had 3 at LHR T5. LGW[N] has 6. Enough said? :rolleyes:

I finally got around to downloading a pic from my phone. Sorry for the poor quality. It was taken just outside the toilets at the far end of the terminal. The UK border is somewhere off in the distance.

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/9642/photo0001.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Came in about 18:10 today.


Escalators: off
EU Queue: back to the wall, but moving fast with 5 guards
Other Queue: about 2 rows
Iris: about 15 people, only 1 open
E Passport: Just closing as I arrived

Iris took on average 15 seconds to process someone, where a border guard took on average 12 seconds. Of course with 5 as many people processing it than iris, but only about 2.5 times the queuers, the normal EU queue was much faster.

Flight connections looked fine too, at least at the border.

Has anyone got any idea why the image has been pulled by imageshack? It is the first time i have uploaded a photo like this. There is nothing that i can see that violates the terms of service.

I'll try again with flikr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7051/7...159fdf5927.jpg
Photo0001 by AgEngineer, on Flickr

Do they have a rule against hotlinking?

Jings! That did not stay up for long.

Thw whole thing really is a complete joke. I hope the developers of the new Central terminal are taking note, although it's more the fault of the UKBA