Genius1

The area (as with the rest of T5) is fully covered by CCTV, however, only trained people can view images and it takes time to review historical footage.

paulwuk

Best way to complain is reduce your custom to Heathrow. Yeay invisible hand!

Often1

Airside/landside isn't the issue. It's sterile / non-sterile. As soon as a passenger on the sterile side might have had contact with someone on the non-sterile side, that passenger needs to be rescreened or escorted before being allowed back into a sterile area.

This is far from unique to LHR, the UK or the EU.

Of course there is CCTV available and perhaps it is even randomly reviewed for inattentive security procedures, but that won't change the basic process.

father_ted

I'd urge everyone to read the OP's statements a little more carefully. They apparently at no point exited the baggage reclaim area. Had they visited the toilets, as I'm sure many of us have done, they would have gone further in the direction that this staff member objected to.

It would be somewhat reasonable to refuse the OP's companions re-entry, as by all accounts they passed through the exit doors. However, the OP themselves did not pass those doors.

Prospero

While these principles go without question, I believe the situation Flaps Down describes is more of a poorly marked or imaginary "neutral zone". I've annotated the plan of the UK arrivals corridor that leads to the landside arrivals hall. The red dotted line marks the exit doors which I have always believed to be the point of no return. Have I misunderstood the division between airside and landside after all these years?



I have turned right after clearing the glass barriers previously (quick tinkle and blast of Sibelius) ; that is before collecting my checked baggage and have never encountered any problems getting to the baggage belts before.

paul71

My mother got caught like this recently, arriving from Newcastle she visited the toilets before trying to collect her suitcase and was accused of going through the exit doors and coming back and then had to endure an hour of traipsing around various security checks before she could retrieve her suitcase and take her taxi to Gatwick for the next leg of her flight

binman

I agree. I too have used the toilets and returned to baggage reclaim.

Why is the security agent positioned opposite the Perspex doors and not at the exit point.

There is a online compliant form but it simply generates corporate claptrap in response. HAL are too focused on fiddling stats with their dodgey recording of queue times when it suits them and when there are no queues.

outandaroundabout

I was finding it very difficult to visualize what actually happened until getting to Prospero's post with the map. And having seen that, yes, I for one am sympathetic. Made me wonder why the guardian is stationed at the sliding barriers rather than closer to the exit doors that actually matter.

Worth complaining? Probably not, given that, as has already been intimated, this is an airport where one can't even fulfil one's bodily functions in peace.

For what it's worth, the one time I ever complained about LHR - or anywhere else - was some years back at T1. A bunch of goons had been clustered around one of the metal detectors congratulating each other for all to hear about how they'd managed to make security screening a misery for an elderly woman traveller earlier on. The cut-and-paste drivel in response said it all....

carrotjuice

Slightly OT... but when I last arrived at EDI domestic, I got the impression that people off the street and carpark are free to walk up to even the baggage carousels with shockingly lack of policing by any airport staff.

Security? What security?

Calchas

The sterile area is before the baggage claim, through a system of one way doors. In this case the person had almost exited the domestic claim area before realizing she/he needed to claim her bags first.

In the US this isn't a problem because the domestic baggage claim is open to the street.

In EU Schengen states there is potentially a customs issue from international Schengen flights. That doesn't apply here.

Why the UK feels the need to protect the domestic baggage claim is beyond me.

Silver Fox

Can we have a "flogging a dead horse" emoticon please?

orbitmic

I think we have a deal! your best cost/return proposition by quite a margin!!

paulwuk

Two reasons. First security. Easy in the states or austrailia to walk in from the street, pick up a suitcase, and walk off. Little chance of identifying them. With the UK system you need to have come off a plane.

Second reason is that there's customs at every airport in the UK, allowing through checking of bags. In MAN t3 this is a double pair of doors after bag collection, at Heathrow it's an imaginary line next to the red phone, just to the right of the "security" desk. I suspect that you're not allowed to enter customs areas from landslide. Certainly it gives a "line in the sand" for the rare times customs officers are out. If you didn't have that line then it would be harder to enforce customs rules.

Flaps Down

Thanks for the diagram, Prospero - much clearer than my description. There's a very faint vertical grey line just to the left of the 'Barriers' arrow. While my wife was probably over the word 'Exit' (though still not outside) I was no further than that grey line - hence my frustration.

And also a teacup-storm, so given that - along with the fact that no-one seems to have had any success complaining to HAL - this clearly isn't going to get anywhere.

But it does raise a broader question: if I'd started a thread asking who has had success complaining about BA staff I suspect there'd have been one or two results. But HAL? Forget it. And whether that's because of unionisation, lack of airport competition or whatever ... is that not mildly concerning?

Silver Fox

No. It is the state of the nation.