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Article Queues at Heathrow Airport passport control

Kathy

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Heathrow Airport passport queues reach 2.5 hours - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45165222

We passed through Heathrow Airport passport control on the evening of July 7 and were shocked at the lines. They brought in extra people at one point, and we ended up getting through in 1 hour 20 minutes. According to the article, the longest queues were on July 6... 2 hours 36 minutes. Thankfully, they were passing out bottled water.

We'll be arriving back at Heathrow at the end of September... sure hope they make some improvements before then!

{fixed link}
 
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Oh, gosh! We fly in on October 18th...I sure hope it does get better. It has always been fairly quick on past visits.
The link to the article is not working for me.
 
We flew in to Heathrow from the US on July 22 at 9:40 AM local time and had no significant waiting. And no long waits when we left on Aug 3 either. So it's definitely not happening all the time! Maybe evenings are worse?
 
Freda, you are just transiting through, right? You probably will go through security but you won't have to go through passport control or immigration because you are not entering the UK, technically.

Yes, I'm connecting to a Rome flight on British Airways, from an American flight from Raleigh-Durham. I thought I went through passport control last time--maybe I'm thinking of my London trip and not a Paris connection.
 
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I'm not sure what you're saying, but if you connected in Paris when going from the U.S. to Italy, you'd have cleared passport control at CDG because you were entering the Schengen zone, and the flight to Italy would amount to a domestic flight. Since the U.K. is not in the Schengen zone, when connecting at a London airport you can stay in international territory and not need to clear passport control.
 
I'm not sure what you're saying, but if you connected in Paris when going from the U.S. to Italy, you'd have cleared passport control at CDG because you were entering the Schengen zone, and the flight to Italy would amount to a domestic flight.

I’m flying Raleigh to Rome, connecting in London.

There are times I fly from Raleigh to Paris, connecting in London.

So, I was thinking about passport control for my London destination trip, rather than my connecting trip. That’s the reminder from Shannon.
 
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IT can be erratic. The last time I flew into Heathrow, in May, I was off the plane and into the arrivals hall in less than 20 minutes, 15 of which were spent walking from the plane to passport control. The time before that was well over 90 minutes - and my BIL, travelling on a South African Passport, was through almost an hour before me.

If you think it is fun now, I am sure it will be even better once Brexit is a done deal :-(

There must be a thread here - longest queues to get into a country. I've spent well over 2 hours in entry queues at JFK, at Ataturk in Istanbul, and at Cape Town airports.
 
Whenever we get the chance, flying into Norwich airport means 5 mins from landing you'll be lining up at passport control (my partner is a Kiwi, so has to fill the entry card out each time), then 5 mins after that we'll be in the taxi / car on the way home. Cambridge another great little airport (1 lounge, 1 gate, all just as fast, but with even less waiting time to board). Parma in Italy another. If ever you get the chance, skip the big & busy airports.
 
We flew from Marseille to Heathrow on Saturday night, for a night at the airport before flying home to the USA yesterday. I was nervous about the passport control lines, since we didn't arrive until 8:30 pm UK time and hoped to get a good night's sleep. We waited just 10 minutes... what a difference! (Not so many non-UK/non-EU people arriving.)
 
We flew nonstop into Heathrow from Detroit on Thursday morning, October 18...our flight was to land about 6:15am, but we circled and did not land until about 6:45am. It took us about 20 minutes to get through passport control...I think it would have been faster if we had landed on time and beat the flight from IAD that landed just before us (our daughter and husband were on that flight). We were pleasantly surprised that it was not a long wait.
 

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