chriswiles

South security was horrendous at 11am. Never seen queues that bad. I was told they were 'having problems' but no idea what they were. Luckily I was able to go through F security, which is still open. Anyone know why the regular security queues were so busy?

Interestingly though, even though the security and check-in queues were very busy, the lounges are very quiet. Never seen Concorde Room so dead and I'm now over at the T5B lounge and it's extremely quiet. I see the Whispering Bar is still here.

Best time to travel is the 1 of Jan if you travel in J or F! Last year I flew out at 9.30am, wish I'd done the same today.

Swanhunter

There is often a correlation between high sickness and New Year’s Day 😉

gcuk

Can’t be alcohol induced though as that comes in sealed bottles. I bet they’ve been eating dodgy Christmas leftovers 😉

corporate-wage-slave

It did get flagged up that South security got overloaded at this point, as a SWOT - sheer weight of traffic. It looks like T5 is operating at 80% of capacity, and they probably staffed for that, but within that there was a high peak between 10:30 and 12:30, peaking at 3,500 passengers per hour.. The queues for both North and South are down now to 10 minutes, and should go down to 5 minutes in an hour or two, it's down to around 2,000 passengers per hour now. Nothing in the infrastructure appears to have failed, as far as I can tell. As I sometimes point out "I'm stuck in traffic" = "I am traffic". Plus I suspect some passengers will be very occasional travellers and unfamiliar with how to go through Security efficiently.

[The right side of the graph won't be accurate until later today].

hyperspace

I must have gotten lucky as I came up around 12:30 from connections via fast track and fed into north (I think?) security, the lane with the new scanners. I waited at most 10 minutes and was done with it all. You gotta love the new scanners.

cattp

Curious as to what data feeds the 'person graphic' to show you how busy North and South security are. Yesterday morning they were both equal with 3 people icons by each. South security was rammed, queues stretching back past the boarding pass scanners stopping people from joining. Took my chances by walking to North and breezed through.. Has flow been affected by the move of Club check-in at all? Would've thought north would be the busier one now though...

KARFA

it’s tied to a random number generator

FlyingScientist

Is it still 3/3 or 5/2 only?

stifle

Yes, it can only show both north and south as "3 people busy" or one at "5 people busy" and the other at "2 people busy".

Sigwx

It’s been a tad busy today in T5.

South London Bon Viveur

I arrived into T5 at around 17:30 and heard an automated "we are sorry if waiting times are longer than usual" message as I was walking to the immigration hall so I feared the worst as I rounded the corner only to be greeted by a generally quite empty looking immigration hall and breezed straight through. Reclaim looked quite busy though.

corporate-wage-slave

This will be a more accurate view of how the middle part of the day went.

Markie

Heathrow unable to plan! Pick me off the floor.
Unless there were a large number of last minute sales then this was wholly predictable and (once again) Heathrow failed to staff to the required level.
They should be refunding our passenger fees - like the trains do!

nilsfr69

How and where do you get these nice graphs? are they publicly available? If not, pls disregard me asking

corporate-wage-slave

No, it's not public stuff, though it really wouldn't harm LHR to put this information out there, it does often explain why things happen.