Sigwx

For those using T3 this afternoon;

Two terminals, neither alike in dignity, the forecourt outside T3 is where we lay our scene, from ancient covid staff reductions to faster than expected recovery leads new mutiny, where civil strife makes queuing for 60-90 minutes seem unclean.

From forth the fatal consequences of inadequate planning, Enter Zone A and process along to Zone G prior to taking your life from the enormity of it all at the escalators up to the mall.

Those passengers whose misadventured piteous laments, doth be silenced by Grant Shapps washing his hands clean of it all.
And the continuance of their passengers rage, which but with their travel plans end, nought could remove, is now the traffic of one and a half to two hours of that fabled and much maligned stage.

The which to you with patient ear/Twitter/flyertalk account attend
what here shall miss, our toil shall
strive to mend.

Good luck to you all, it is a bit of a tragedy this afternoon.

Misco60

As much as I hate to defend this government, the absolute misery that is being heaped upon tens of thousands of passengers at the moment is entirely the fault of the airlines and airports, who assured us just months ago that they were ready for travel to resume.

The tragedy is that many of those passengers won't be aware of their rights and will lack the knowledge and confidence to fight for the compensation to which they are entitled.

swizzlest

lord I love the British and miss you guys.

silly sentimental American. Please ignore.

Irish lad

Well, that was a mess. Doing a turnaround from LHR T3 (for which there were check-in issues I will post separately) and the security queue started at the back of the terminal. Got to fast track split after around 45 minutes and through in an hour. People generally good natured (helped by staff calling out people from the line with closing flights) but such a shambles. I did enjoy the American woman in the queue directing queue jumpers to the back.

Does seem an ideal strategy would be to chill somewhere, join queue at 45-60 minutes before departure and wait for flight to be called!

Pilot37

Currently in CCR and T5 is very calm at the check-in area. A few large groups ahead of us at the FW meant a few minutes wait, but all handled efficiently. First Wing security still only has 1 lane open and a queue, so we went back to South Security fast track which is empty and came through the millionaires door in about 2mins.

Pilot37

Swanhunter

Cannot wait to go through T3 later. At least there is the QF lounge as consolation.

revorgap

Much Jubilee themed going on in the CCR apart from the cocktails?

Pilot37

Nothing that stands out to my untrained eye I’m afraid!

Pilot37

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk and the BA forum.

I think 2 hours is fine, bearing in mind it's T5 not T3, and bearing in mind that 1 hour would probably still work (though with checked baggage, tomorrow isn't the day to experiment with this). They won't let you in until 05:00 anyway, though unofficially they may be open half an hour earlier. There are several paradoxes here: because of all the headlines , people turn up early for flights, then go through check-in and security much earlier than necessary, when the staffing is determined for the flights that take off in the next 2 hours. So particularly in the morning it's utterly self-destructive and ideally airports under stress would keep people away until 2 hours beforehand. However if they did that then they are on the hook for anyone who misses their flights. For an individual traveller they aren't really interested if 2,000 extra people show up, they are only worried about their own travel plans, which would on the face of it be best secured by turning up early.

However T5 is mainly BA, it culled loads of flights weeks ago (they will be thanking their lucky stars on that one) and so the dynamics of other airlines and their problems doesn't greatly wash over the terminal like it seems to be doing in T3 and perhaps LGW. This accepts that IB, AA, QR run a few services out of T5.

But in your case, I would still go for 2 hours, and follow the advice in post 1 if you haven't got to security around an hour to departure, as a Plan B.

SimonAB

Can I ask then, is there a way to avoid the non-fast track queue and join the fast track queue directly without waiting for the split? Take a lift, if so is there one in particular to go for? Or boldly just walk around the non-fast track queue up the stairs?

As a non-regular flyer who hasn't been in T3 for years I'm unsure of the layout. Looking at the terminal map should I aim for the left hand stairs which appear to come out adjacent to fast track?

Our flight is at 10:10 tomorrow so expecting it to be busy.

Thanks.

Swanhunter

There is a set of physical stairs opposite E which will take you directly up to Fastrack. The lift operates only when things aren’t too bad.

Currently small queue for Fastrack but quite chunky for the cheap seats.

Swanhunter

20mins from F check in to QF lounge. Pretty much as used to be in the evening T3 rush.

Schwann

My OH is flying through tomorrow and should have access to fast track.. does the route up the stairs feed into the queue for fast track or is it like a "secret entrance" right into the fast track itself?

Swanhunter

It brings up to the main corridor where you access Fasttrack. From there, there should be some LHR people directing traffic. Good luck to your OH!

Misco60

The Guardian has a photograph of what it says is the queue for security at Heathrow on Wednesday 1 June.



‘A nightmare from start to finish’: the victims of the UK’s airport chaos | Travel & leisure | The Guardian