Wingnut

One other thing to note: the time of day you hit the terminal is important in terms of "seeing activity". If you arrive early in T3, on an transatlantic from the east coast, say, it's all quite quiet. A few hours later, if you're coming in from the west coast, then you're coinciding with the arrival of some of the Caribbean and South American flights and things can be a little busier on the search tables.

duchy

Never at Heathrow or Gatwick -and once at London City which I suspect was a mix of visual profiling and boredom as my travelling companion was dressed in hippy style clothes and we were inbound from Amsterdam. She was a couple of bottles and 600 cigerettes over the limit but a bit of fluttering of eyelashes and "but it's my birthday" did the trick and despite a through search of the bags but not ourselves we were on our way. Obviously not looking for booze or cigerettes.

Strawb

Never been stopped after coming off a long-haul flight but once stopped after coming in from CDG through the EU green channel at T1 - just a quick " Where have you arrived from, sir?" and I was on my way.

Wingnut

Presumably this was back in the days when there were limits between Holland and the UK?

PhlyingRPh

Twice, over the last 35 odd years - never in the last 17 years.

Once was as a returning unaccompanied minor with two trolleys full of suitcases and cartons, which must have looked really suspicious. So they stopped me in a sort of a "Where do you think you're going, Sunny?" manner and were a bit miffed that they had to pick up the suitcases to inspect them. They were even more narc'd when I couldn't find the keys to the suitcases easily. I think they gave up after looking through two suitcases full of wedding clothes, which was good because they totally missed the jewelry hidden at the bottom of my carry on!

The second time was coming back to the UK during Thanksgiving or Spring Break. I remember having two very heavy college books - Biochem or Pathophysiology which were of great interest to the officer. He leafed through them, put his fingers down the spine, rubbed the binding - I thought he might be a pervert or have an odd fetish but I decided it was best to act utterly disinterested and bored.

Swiss Tony

How odd. I'm in exactly the same boat - the only time I can recall being stopped in the UK was also landing back at LCY from a weekend in AMS - must have been 1995 or so. I was travelling with a female. They emptied the bags right out, wanted proof of our outward and return travel (as that's when you could get the double duty free allowance) and found corners of my bag that I never new existed!

Needless to say it was all very courteous and they re-packed for us afterwards but that's the only time i've run into this. Tend to get more hassle at Immigration with the kids, especially when my 2 yr old rocks up with the photo of a 2 week old baby in his passport...

Beany

If you have a good eye and a bit lof luck, you can spot HMRC milling around the baggage carousel stalking certain people. They were certainly mingling with the passengers on a recent Toronto arrival at T4 although they weren't obvious.

I had an interesting experience on VS24 from LAX arriving at T3 last year. As I approached the green channel, I was asked where I had arrived from. When I told the officer, I was told I had a choice of either walking through an explosives/narcotics detection machine or having my bags searched. I asked why and was told that all passengers on VS24 had been targeted that day. I opted for the machine

When I passed through again from LAX last month, the machine was sitting in the corner of the green channel. Not sure if they still use it.

GadgetFreak

Bingo!

I travel to the UK between 5 and 10 times a year, and have been doing this for the past roughly 10 years. I have seen several searches, and some flights that had several people being searched from them. As I recall they all had a large amount of cigarettes out on the table. In one case I saw them opening up someones suitcase and then finding and opening the false bottom in the suitcase to reveal quite a lot of cases of cigarettes.

Boddingtons

They got me in ADL too . Six hours I was 'detained' for before being let go.

Being young, they assumed I was trafficing drugs due to my frequent travels.

At the time, I did have something that warranted a declaration and noted it accordingly on the customs form. A box of 48 Double Deckers if you must know

stut

I never knew you were a model bus enthusiast, Boddies!

simon stingray

The only time I have ever been stopped at LHR was in 2000 when my brother & myself were returning from JNB. We had travelled out on the old Swissair but when we arrived at JNB International for the return, our flight had been cancelled as there was no aircraft (it had gone tech in Zurich).

Everyone in line before us was really giving the Swissair staff a hard time and they were bieng booked into hotels & transferred onto flights the following evening. We decided a different approach and was really calm & pleasant with the guy. He gave us our tickets back and told us we'd been transferred to the SAA flight that evening (direct to LHR) and we were in Business class.

That was my first ever trip in Business Class^

When we arrived at LHR we collected our luggage and were then immediately pulled to the side by THREE customs officers. We got the full interrogation. Everything was taken out of our luggage and various items even taken away to be X-rayed.

Both my brother & myself still wonder it was because we were travelling in Business class and we were both quite young and VERY casually dressed.

I use MAN airport these days and can't ever recall seeing a customs officer anywhere.

Boddingtons

Well apparently you can't get hold of Double Deckers (i.e. the chocolate bar)in Australia, and a friend of mine asked me to bring some over - so I bought a box of 48 from Costco.

Just as well I bought so many actually, as about 30 had melted from time of arriving in Bandar Seri Begawan to getting to my hotel....still, I didn't mind

As for the suspected trafficing, I mean come on, you're hardly going to make a declaration to have you're bags seached if you're trying to smuggle drugs.

Boddingtons

You obviously haven't been at the baggage carousel the same time as me .

I get stopped every time!

In fact nowadays, I pull them before they pull me as I know the routine

"Right, you 'avin me?"

stevenshev

I don't intend to bring up an inflammatory issue, but I'm curious if any else has noticed that the vast majority of those being searched (at least at T3 customs) are foreigners, mostly minority foreigners (specifically Africans)?

Wingnut

I think, technically, foreigners are probably in the majority.

The issue has already been raised, in terms of profiling and flights from specific origins.