tiana

So i recently went to canada and had a very pleasant and fast experience at customs ,airport security blablabla but now thinking of going to london and last time i went thru heatrow i nearly fainted at the immigration line ....it was hot ,long,crowded,and just plain ridiculous!If i remember correctly i was stuck in line for almost 1 1/2 hours ,so i am thinking if i should pay the extra money to fly on BA and go thru their terminal 5 which i was told much faster then the main terminal where all the other int flights land.....or should i make a cute fun trip and maybe go thru paris ,stay for 2 days and take the tgv and go to london that way? any experience anybody can share?

Wally Bird

Avoiding T3 immigration is worth paying extra to do. How much is up to you, but your past experience is by no means atypical. It's always a zoo, glaciers move faster than the agents there.

You don't say where from, but I'll assume it's transatlantic so there are lots of alternatives. Fly to Birmingham or Manchester or fly via Europe then catch Easyjet or other airlines to London. Fares are low if you plan ahead. The Eurostar isn't particularly cheap but you do avoid the UK's usurious airport departure tax that way.

(This is gonna get moved BTW)

tiana

oooops where should i have posted it? im not super familiar with the whole site.....yeah i was thinking of taking BA business class terminal 5 or maybe Ba exclusive bussiness which land at london city airport but the plane only has 32 seats so $$$$$ , manchester sounds good but isnt it super far from central london....oh btw i am coming from nyc....

Wally Bird

No problem, although I am surrpised it's still here , probably end up in the Europe forum but it'll still be linked here.

Manchester is about 2 hours by train from London, Birmingham 1 hour. Continental flies non-stop to both from Newark, although it's a narrow-body (3+3) 757 if that's a factor.

tiana

thanks wally! i dint even think about continental....thanks for te info!..off to london i go....ha!

star_world

Fly to LHR on Continental, if you fly on either the 757 or 777 in Business class you will have flat-bed seating (2x2 on 757, 2x2x2 on 777) and arrive in T4 in LHR which is relatively empty.

Regardless of which airline you are flying into LHR on, if you're in C/F you will normally get a Fast Track pass. Immigration takes a couple of minutes usually.

It's certainly not worth flying to a whole different airport just to avoid LHR. Anyone you are hearing particularly negative feedback on LHR from probably hasn't flown through there in the last few years - it's an entirely different place than it was 2 years ago, and relatively painless to fly though.

This is based on my personal experience - I've transited LHR 25 times and started / end a journey there another 30+ in the last 2 years.

tiana

thank you for your response and it is true about heatrow i suppose because last time i flew business class on virgin atlantic and this was in 2004 the customs line was horrific .....it was crowded ,unmanaged and very slow with no air conditionning......i believe that was terminal 3.....not sure

FriendlySkies

I flew UA to LHR in March. I was in C, and each C & F pax received a fastrack pass. When we landed at LHR, Terminal 1, the place was deserted, and the Fasttrack lane was closed. I think I waited 30 seconds in line before my pp got stamped! ^

Wally Bird

Bull. It's pigsty, I'll take any OTHER UK airport over LHR any day.

PS. I don't intend to argue about it with you, since that's the only reason you post here. Bub-bye.

alexb133

Depending on what time you arrive at LHR.. It's a hit or miss..

I got there at around 6:00 AM one time, and there was nobody in line, but a subsequent time, my flight touched down at approx 9:00 AM and it was a totally different picture.. British officials don't tend to care that much about your travels (if you hold a Western nation passport), but they are super SLOW.

tiana

well that was my experience in 04 my flight landed around 8am and several other flights landed also and we where in line foreverrrrrrr....it was a nightmare so when i heard about BA terminal 5 i was happy since i heard its much faster to clear all that mess.....

straygaijin

In my experience (limited as it is) I've not had any problems except when the US flights are arriving. Coming in from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe has been relatively smooth.

but then, I find the airports at the US end of the UK-US link to also be terrible so what do I know?

Davidwnc

I have found T3 to be very frustrating. I fly through there several times a year. When I moved here (6-7 years ago) the non-EU line was always huge and slow moving, whereas the EU line always moved so quick. Now that (as of a few years ago) I get to use the EU line, the lines for the non-EU people move almost as quick. I am frustrated that now that I finally have the 'privledge' of the EU line, there isn't much difference! (Well, I have now moved onto the IRIS lines anyway....)

Wally Bird

It's true that customs & immigration can be a bottleneck at any airport depending on the time of day. I checked and s_w is correct in that I haven't transitted LHR since Sept. '08, but I find it very hard to believe there's been the kind of quantum improvement suggested in that time.

T3 is abominable, T5 not much better although a much nicer building. I can't speak about T1 never having arrived there since the reshuffle (it used to be bad in its BA days too) and T2, well there is no T2 any more.

I may be particularly vexed because I find it physically difficult to stand in line for hours at a time, coming or going, which is one reason I fly less and less .

PresRDC

Do people sell unsued Fast track cards on eBay? Would be worth buying one.

I hoard mine and have a stash of about 10 from various airlines, so if I ever have to fly Economy into LHR, I should be okay.