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Subscribe to RSSLONDON -- Welcome to London's Heathrow Airport -- where waiting to clear immigration can take longer than your international flight.
Some visitors have recently reported waits of more than two hours, triggering front-page headlines as Britain prepares to host the Summer Olympics from July 27 until August 12.
NBC News' Theresa Cook captured these scenes on her cellphone after arriving at Terminal 5 on a flight from Amsterdam on Monday night.
"We made it to the back of the line at 9:10 p.m. (4:10 p.m. ET) ... and finally reached the border agent's desk at 10:33 p.m.," she said. "Our flight from Amsterdam Schiphol to Heathrow was scheduled to take 55 minutes, but we made good time and landed early. That means we spent almost twice as much time getting through U.K. border control as we did in the air."
The disruption has been blamed on the reintroduction of full passport checks for all arriving passengers, following political embarrassment that checks by the U.K.'s border agency had been relaxed, apparently without the knowledge of the government.
Heathrow feels the heat as Olympics approach
'Very apologetic'
Cook said the immigration officer who checked her passport said that he had been sent from the English Channel port of Dover to help.
"He admitted they don't have enough staff, was very apologetic for the wait and said: 'We're trying our best but clearly it's not good enough'."
Uh-oh Heathrow! Long lines, waits hit travelers ahead of Olympics
London Mayor Boris Johnson last month warned the delays were giving "a terrible impression of the U.K." and demanded action.
Heathrow typically handles an average of 190,000 arriving and departing passengers each day, but is braced for a major influx during the Olympics.
At London's Heathrow Airport, the corporate slogan is "Making Every Journey Better". An experienced Border Agency immigration worker says waits of up to three hours have left staff facing public order problems. Channel 4 Europe's Andy Davies reports.
BAA, the Spanish-owned company that operates Heathrow and five other U.K airports, is among those furious at the waiting times. The firm has accused Britain's border agency of not providing enough staff to conduct the necessary passport and visa checks, causing the delays and demanded Britain's interior ministry, the Home Office, takes action.
NBC News' Theresa Cook, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world
Leave a Comment:
Were the British trained by TSA?
No, as the article pointed out they appologized for taking so long and having issues.
If they were trained by the TSA they would have just blamed the passangers.
Last year we flew from the UK to Italy (not through Heathrow). Had a terribly rude and nasty person at security, worse than any TSA person I have ever encountered.
It's faster row across the channel... then wait at Heathrow
On the other hand, the last time I went through Heathrow, I had a Delta gate security agent who was very nice and showed my my "confidential" TSA record that causes me no end of grief to this day. I have an artificial knee and the TSA has decided that I am "cooperative, but probably carrying contraband." In over 100 flights they have never once located the artificial knee (which is about the same composition and mass as a Glock 9mm) and I have found that the quickest way through is to keep my mouth shut, not tell them about it, and let them blame it on their equipment. Security agents in other countries just ask and wave me on when I show them the scar. (BTW the Delta agent at Heathrow is a Sikh and said that he can never travel to the US because he is not allowed to remove his turban or surrender his knife, or iron bracelet or allow his underwear to be touched. The knife is made of cardboard. He did not think highly of the TSA and their ignorance of the Sikh religion --- the 5th largesst in the world.)
I flew from Heathrow to Milan on a bank holiday. That too was a nightmare especially for a pregnant woman. I probably spent more time in lines to get out of Heathrow than my flight to Milan.
Think this is bad? Wait until the Olympics.
Olympics! the price of the tickets is more than an air fare from NYC!
I have knocked my vacation back a year, & then I'm flying into Paris & getting the train to London.
try Montreal, the most incompetent system in North America. Anything more than a sigle engine Cessna with 2 pilots and 2 passengers leads to a standstill. They have some 25-30 wickets for Customs Agents but somehow, at peak times, decide that half of the available slots should be open. So all together now
WAIT !!!!!
I used to go into LHR all the time It used to take 15 -25 mins .
Last time it took 45 -60 mins as all the Immigration people were either Pakistanis or other non english speaking as a first language.
Waste of time I will try LGW next.
Virtually all Pakistanis and Indians with at least a minimal education speak excellent English. This is not only because of the Raj, but because there are over 40 languages in India and nearly as many more in Pakistan and Bangladesh. English is the lingua franca that everyone speaks. The idea that somehow Pakistanis and Indians would not speak English is simply not true. While there is a sing-song lilt to their accents, that accent applies equally to any language and goes back before the Moghul Empire and is not considered a "foreign accent".
Everyone likes to have some other religion, culture or people to blame everything on. Had it ever occured to you that Pakistanis had nothing to do with it and they were simply understaffed because of right-wing austerity and civil service budget-cutting? The same is true of virtually every airpiort in Europe these days. But France just kicked the rightists out and conservatives are being eroded in every other country in Europe.
I went through T4 yesterday after a Delta flight from Atlanta. Walked through in 5 minutes.
If you are coming in from the US, you have already been through extensive security and checks. If you are coming in from another European city, that is a whole other ball game.
Time of day is another factor as well. Many flights from the USA arrive early morning UK time, well before the crush of European travelers arriving mid-morning and later throughout the day. Over a ten year period I made approx 50 trips to London - immigration at Heathrow was always quicker, friendlier and more efficient than coming back through O'Hare.
@Chicago,
I will agree that the Heathrow (and Gatwick as well) immigration people are much friendlier and easier to deal with that anyone who has ever worked at JFK or Dulles. It always takes me an extra two hours (in addition to the 2 hours you are supposed to allow for international flights) because I have an artificial knee and always get the "super screening" and genital patdowns and occasional strip searches (no the TSA does not strip search --- they have the airport cops do it while they watch.) At Heathrow or any other European airport, when the gate alarm goes off, I just point to my knee and say "Artificial knee." then pull up my pants leg and show them the scar. That is always enough to get me waved on through in seconds.
In well over 100 domestic flights, the TSA has never, not once, found my artificial knee (which is almost exactly the composition and mass of a Glock 9mm.) I have learned to keep quiet and let them be baffled as to what has gone wrong with their wands and full body scanners. I have amassed a collection of form letters from the TSA, twice over money stolen by TSA agents. The form letters always say the same thing --- "thanks for the inquiry but the surveillance tapes for the time and place cited cannot be located."
Mind the que!
Que? I think you mean queue.
Que is Spanish for "what".
Or French for "which" or "that"!
And the British saying is "Mind the Gap!", not mind the que????? It refers to the gap between the train and the platform on the tube.
London will never be able to emulate the smooth running and the success of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Game. The Heathrow airport saga shows the first sign of chaos that will be prevalent in London during the course of Olympic Game.
It is a great shame that we make our closest freinds from the US, Canada, ANZ stand in a long slow moving queue, when we have French, Italians and other EU nationalities walking through along with other Brits! I wonder how we could have got ourselves in that daft situation, given the support we got in the 1940's.
@lamin,
Don't worry about it. Visiting London is its own reward. Period. I lived in London and High Wycombe for a number of years back in the mid-1960's and will never forgive the kindness and generosity shown me by the Brits. I have gone back a number of times and the people are still worth any airport wait.
An international flight is one hour sitting in before one checks in, not counting on the waiting for check-in.
Then after one completes the process of checking-in, it is at least two hour in the waiting room.
That means before one can fly out the airport, one may already spend about at least 5 hours for an international flight.
Then arriving to the destination, one may do the same thing, but just in reverse order. And this is just an routine, not even an Olympic event.
Bring one's gadget, books, games, magazine, snack, water, pillow, blanket, books, and whatever to entertain oneself.
I am an American and a world traveler. LHR is one of the slowest I experienced.
Some tips. I always get to the airport 2 hours early. Check my baggage, then make sure the flight hasn't been canceled because the bank reposesed the plane or anything. I then go to the airport lounge and have a couple of stiff drinks and chill out and try to get something else stiff, if you know what I mean. I then meander to the gate when it is time with my stiffy on. When I go through the line they have to see the bulging pants and check it out, right? I get a kick out of it, but I am probably sick like the wife always says.
Last summer, we waited over an hour in the immigration line re-entering the US.....not pleasant, nor comfortable for anyone with any sort of physical problem or with children. Maybe they should install benches in places with long lines!
There are delays of more than two hours and the weather has nothing to do with it. We flew in from Barcelona and waited for 2h45 to go through immigration. (The flight was only 2 hours!) An elderly man passed out, at which point someone came rushing around with bottled water.
This was not a one-off event. We typically stand in line for over an hour.
It is an unbelievably unreasonable amount of time to make people wait. The fact that the government officials are making excuses for this is worse than the wait. The delays have nothing to do with weather. It is poor management and lack of interest in confronting the problem.
I agree on Montreal, only do that place to visit friends, as far as UK, I avoid at all costs, and have lived in Europe for the last 10 years, here is a mind boggling fact the French are better than the Brits, go figure, but yes the Brits are civilized, apologized and amdit their mistakes, but I can deal with French arrogance and 20 minutes line much better than excuses, so fly to CDG and take the train into UK
My advice would be to fly almost anywhere in Europe, especially "secondary" airports such as Prestwick and Gatwick, and Bonn then take a train if possible to your final destination. If you don't fly into the big city airports, you get much better fares and much shorter lines. LOL The last time I went through CDG, I somehow accidentally walked past all customs and ended up outside the terminal where I found a cab that had been delivering air crews to work.
Never any problems flying in or out of Heathrow. Always fast, friendly service with a smile.
Not the same in Dulles, well maybe some of its the same - fairly fast with a cursory look at a passport.
I am sorry, I would rather they take just a little bit longer and make sure I am safe, than rush us thru and someone gets on a plane, or in the country, with a weapon, or worse.
Last trip, as we were boarding the plane out, they did passport checks with full face recognition, and pulled many people from the line to send them back to security. I am glad my life counts for something, somewhere.
We waited for 2 hours and 45 minutes to pass through immigration 2 weeks ago. Our flight from Barcelona was two hours! An elderly gentleman fainted, at which point someone came rushing about with bottled water.
The delay had nothing to do with the weather. It is not a one-off event. We typically wait for more than an hour. This boils down to poor management and the lack of interest in addressing the problem.
I pity those who will be traveling to the UK this summer.
Let's see. Booked a one hour flight. One hour ride to the airport with heavy traffic. Get to the Airport 2 hours in advance. Stand in security line waiting for surly security folks to check you out. Actually fly for an hour. Wait to clear customs at destination 1.5 hours. One hour ride from the airport in heavy traffic to real destination. Grateful to be here.
Almost uses a day to take a one hour flight.
Who says getting there isn't half the fun?
Heathrow is the WORST OF THE WORST. This story is not new. I had the same experience back in 2007.
Wowed never to use the airport again.......................the absolute worst airport on earth.
This story exactly parallels mine of about three weeks ago. One hour twenty minute flight from Hamburg, Germany and about 2 1/2 hours in the T5 immigration queue. Very nice that they have added the helpers in the purple sashes throughout the terminal to help passengers find connections, etc. Better that they should have trained them as immigration agents. At one point there were only three agents working despite the enormous queue.
And to think about five weeks ago I complained about an one and half hour wait on the exact same route and flight time! I didn't know how good I had it!
Heathrow get it fixed-hire and train more customs agents or transfer from or borrow from USA, or Canada!!
HEATHROW IS MURDER !!! I will never travel into Britain by air again. I would rather take the Bullit train and enjoy the FAST RIDE on rails VIA the Tunnel !!!!
jgs are you Naive? How about the ARROGANCE BY ALL THE PASSENGERS— Like maybe yourself when waiting in LINE !
Glad to know other people are complaining with loud voices about Heathrow! I used that airport last year (after 12 years using Gatwick) because i was flying back tot he US, as opposed to the Caribbean and I was totally unimpressed. Apart from the long border control lines, it was the constant going upstairs, then downstairs, then upstairs again which got to me. Hello.. If I am downstairs and need to go downstairs, why do I need to go up and down so many times? Ridiculous!
on april 26th i made a comment on the lonely planet (downer of a name, huh?) about my flight from chicago to paris and transfer through heathrow.
i was called a 'whiner' about reporting my facts. yet 2 days later the bbc had a 6-7 minute piece on about the problems at heathrow and how 'the home office' was 'investigating'.
making an observation or reporting things as they are/were in now called 'whining'!! and it is done in a most uncivilized manner.
but 3 hour waits? come on already. why should anyone have to wait 3 hours to wait in line to transfer airplanes? i already gone through security once and was under their control/cctv observation the whole way from airplane to airplane but i had to get my lugggage tossed, like a giant salad, yet again!
they found 3 little liquid bottles (actually one tiny can of shave cream and a little single serving/bottle of jack daniels i got for FREE!!!! on the airplane, along with something else. they could see i had them and they weren't in the required plastic bag, but they needed to spend 30 minutes to search my bags, corral them together, bawl me out, and put them in a plastic bag---which did not close. all for safety's sake??? how the bottles being in the plastic bag makes anything/anyone more safe is beyond me. the bag they put them in didn't close and by the time i got to the hotel they were no longer in the bag. but somehow this needed to be done ''for safety's sake''! they never questioned the contents of the 3rd bottle, which was flammable. but what the hell. there are limits to security, afterall. right??????
the next time i travel to europe i will take a ship. it has to be better. or no????? anyone??
and if it isn't, i guess the continent won't miss me. or my money. and i won't miss it.
it has become so totally unpleasant i may just stop traveling at all. if someone in the family dies, i will sent a FTD bouquet. and my best wishes!
i am done with all of this baloney!! i usually stay 6 months to a year, but i can 'stay-cation' at home and skip the whole ordeal. heathrow, crummy and bad paris hotels, et al.
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when 6 or 7 people stopped me in the paris subway to see if i had a ticket, i asked "you get a lot of disabled seniors, from california, jumping the turnstyles, do you?. they come all this way just to screw the 'ratp' out of 1.6euros? why not station yourself at the turnstyle and you can easily see who pays and who doesn't.'
guess they are afraid the ones who do not pay might fight back. much easier to hassle seniors, while certain other groups are the problem---- but why question them?
6-7 people to question one old man? almost as bad as the chicago police and their lame tactics. and for this i pay taxes??? here and there!
hope the whole world goes broke and we can start over. hopefully it will make sense this time around.
strange how the paris police have 3 cops in one sub-compact car while the chicago police have these enormous SUVs for the coppers! your tax dollars at work, chicago! thanks to your (former) mayor daley!! what a prince! and the new one is even worse.
500 acres in the middle of the nevada scrub, here i come. peace and quiet. i have had enough of neighbors, mankind and humanity. none of them ain't worth a dime.
Air travel is not something I would do for pleasure. It has become a nightmare. The security is poorly done. The planes themselves are a total joke. Narrow cramped seats are horrible for any flight longer than an hour.