corporate-wage-slave

The best thing to do is to take the lifts, which is in the far right corner beyond the escalators up. When the doors open, peer leftwards to see how busy the middle section of North Security is. It is often less crowded than fast track, which is on the right of the lifts. If so, keep going left (north) to find a quiet channel. If Fast Track is fast, then go towards it with your boarding pass to the HAL staff member there and simply request entry.

If you really want to take the escalator, you need the right hand escalator. The track around from Fast Track boarding pass check should take you there though there is a loop involved. (Passport check doesn't always happen, depending on the destination, it's just BA checking you're ok to travel there, it's not a government border control point).

Innocent Abroad

Thanks. I usually go landside through the eGates but sometimes travel with colleagues who cannot use them...

N830MH

Hello all,

I went through LHR by last month. I knows how to connecting the flight. I took connection bus from T5 to T3. I don't have needs any helps. I have go down the escalator and I wait for connection bus to terminal 3. They will take me to T3. I have go back at security again and then went onto the entire concourse. I arrived LHR from BSL and we have bus gates. They took me back to terminal 5 and I went up escalator and went back down to T3 bus. I wait for PHX flight and I wait for departure gate lounge is open, but they never told me which gate numbers. They didn't do it on GDS.

BA Humbug

Just an anecdotal connection story for anyone gathering statistics...

My flights:
ZRH-LHR BA 719 in Y (exit row 9)
LHR-BKK BR 68 in J

This is a T5-T2 connection, in which I timed a 90 minute connection. BA719 was delayed by ~30 mins which reduced my connection time considerably. Keep in mind I need to show up at the BR counter 30 mins before to show proof of onward travel/valid visa (not possible over the internet/phone, they're ridiculous like that).

Followed by an arrival at T5C. Ran down to the connecting train and found one that was just about to leave (and in part to conserve whatever cardio system I had left for the rest of the run).

Ran downstairs to the bus. Waited 8 minutes for a bus, although the bus only actually showed up 6 minutes after it was "due". T5B agent not particularly helpful in knowing why it was so late/out of sync.

After 14 agonizing minutes on the bus, bounded up the stairs with a roll-aboard to connections + security. Run up another set of stairs & see connections desk, 31 minutes left until departure. Guess which airline's counter is the ONLY unmanned one? Thankfully, I saw the gate number and ask a lovely SQ lady to call ahead and let them know I'm coming, even though it's virtually at the end of the terminal. Cue an 11-minute sprint with a suitcase.

Make it as the last person on board 10 minutes before gate close with 4 FA's asking if I'm suffering from some asthma/attack of sorts.



Unless you're (a) in great physical shape, (b) traveling with nothing heavy, (c) on the same ticket, (d) know your away around both terminals like the back of your hand, or (e) all of the above, I recommend a connection of at least 90 minutes before attempting something this suicidal.

DernierVirage

Thanks very much indeed to Karfa for the incredibly helpful explanations and also to all the other contributors.

I am preparing a summary of the T5 flight connection procedures for my wife, who will connect through T5 in a couple of weeks, and I would like to check two simple points with the experts here:

1. She will arrive on BA38 from BJS and connect on to BA1454 to EDI - I am just wondering if, generally, these flights always arrive/depart from T5A, does anyone have any experience of this?

2. In the event of any delay, which means that she is protected on a later flight to EDI, what is the procedure? I assume that she still goes to FCC, but are there ticket desks where she would have to get her boarding pass changed? Or does she still proceed directly for the BP scan and get it dealt with at that stage?

Thanks very much for your help.

corporate-wage-slave

The PEK service will probably arrive into T5B, but it could be A or C too. If a bus gate (which can happen) then the bus takes her to A. The EDI service will definitely and can only be from T5A.

Now a lot depends on her passport (and I assume she is over 18 years old...), but if going via Flight Connections and she is too late for EDI, they will either rebook her immediately at the first boarding pass desk, or if it's too complex, point her to the Flight Connections desk along the wall nearby. She would have to be within 30 minutes or so of her flight for this to happen.

If she is EEA or Swiss then see the comments above going out via the e-gates for a quicker and easier passage, assuming the EDI flight is more than 45 minutes off.

DernierVirage

Thanks very much, this is very helpful.

To answer your question, she is indeed over 18 and she has a P.R.China passport.

Can you kindly set me right as regards the boarding pass desk that you mention. Is this a BA desk before the entrance to Flight Connections?

corporate-wage-slave

In which case, she would definitely be best using the UK and Ireland Flight Connection route, and not going landside. The passport wait for her in UK Flight Connections is likely to be a lot less than the main UK border.

In KARFA's diagram in post 4, you see a green box marked Customer Service? The diagram is not to scale, the whole of that wall area is a set of desks, I would guess about 8 positions in all, which can handle any rebooking. She should not go there first however, since if it's one booking the red box area, UK Boarding Pass Check, can rebook in, I would guess, 80% of cases. If they can't then the agent will point to where she needs to go, it's quite close and in the line of sight, maybe 20 metres away. The layout isn't too complex, though it is a busy area.

If she is on the App, the rebooking may happen automatically, and a new boarding pass available for her, in which case she can just use this instead of needing to see anyone. She should exit the original boarding pass, then refresh the home screen several times when she gets into LHR (free wifi there).

But she has over 2 hours for the connection, so I don't think this will be needed.

DernierVirage

Perfect, this is very clear. Thanks so much, you've been really helpful !

zetaswirl

What happens if you try to transfer landside and something goes wrong [eg eGates are down, or security is a zoo] and you miss the flight / miss the Ready to Fly conformance cut-off? Could they turn around and say "well, you should have used FCC, so we're not going to put you on the next flight"?

Context: Wednesday morning arrival to LHR T5 at 05:10 with a 1 hr 35 min connerction to T5 departure to MAN at 06:45. British passport, over 18. The advice here is clear: connect by going through the e-Gates, go landside, and then come back through security. Any potential downsides?

corporate-wage-slave

If the e-gates are backed up, that will be quickly and visibly obvious, so get out the queue and around to Flight Connections. It's not the queue size that's important, it's whether people are basically walking fairly quickly to the gates or not. I use the 45 minute before departure guideline - if the e-gates are clear and you know you can get through in a minute or two then this is the best way. If you're getting close to 45 minutes and not making progess, just get out of the queue and around to Flight Connections. Ironically it may not make it any easier to make the flight.

If you clear Conformance upstairs, at 35 minutes before departure, and yet still miss your flight, they will rebook you if it's security related (the conformance is before security, there is rarely a delay there). And from what I can make out, if you miss conformance on a transfer, they don't hold it against you for going landside, after all you were trying to get to the flight as quickly as possible. Just go to zone E and explain what happened.

Microwave

I've some friends visiting Edinburgh from the US connecting at LHR T5. Their inbound flight to LHR is in CW arriving ~06:50, the outbound was booked separately and not connected at all to the inbound. They're both American, and aren't regular travellers by any stretch of definition.

Would I be better off advising them to use the non-EEA Fast Track arrivals immigration queue and then to pass through the baggage reclaim hall and up to departures, or would I be better off advising them to follow all signs for UK Flight Connections to keep it simple? My inclination is to believe that it may take slightly longer to follow UK Flight Connections, but hard to screw up since they're doing what they're "supposed" to do. OTOH, if that's going to cost them an extra 30, 45, 60+ minutes, maybe they should just go the landside route even though it'll be quite a bit of extra walking and complexity for occasional travellers. Thoughts? Advice? Clever haikus?

KARFA

I would agree the simplest route is go via flight connections, you can't really go wrong that way.

From a personal point of view I do quite a few INT-DOM connections and I pretty much always go landside but I have a UK passport and can use the e-gates and I am very familiar with the route.

corporate-wage-slave

Since they can't use the e-gates, I think it probably leans towards UK Flight Connections. It's all spoon fed, in terms of signs, and though it will probably cost them an extra 15 minutes or so, if they're not regular travellers then maybe they'll not notice it so much.

Fast Track immigration is often reported to be not much faster than normal immigration, so that may not help. UK flight connection immigration may be faster, maybe slower, very difficult to say since it depends who is in the queue, time of day and the number of agents. Let's put it this way, I can't see any route giving a 30 minute/plus advantage over UK Flight Connections, which would be possible if they had e-gate access.

BA Humbug

Can confirm, the Fast Track immigration is only about 5 - 10 minutes faster than normal immigration, namely because of the # of agents on duty for each line. My seatmate in ET was about 15-20 deep when I went up to the counter, but they were moving quite quickly. However, both are painfully slow for non-e-gate eligible pax

Flight connections would likely have been faster if I went that route last night.