This piece appeared on a Popular HK blog 'Hemlock'. I have put it on PPrune before but some may have missed it:
Surely – any moderate-minded person with an ounce of common sense and a pinch of healthy skepticism will assure themselves – the stories we read about the abomination that is Heathrow Airport are at least slightly exaggerated. This is my feeling as the British Airways 747 Megatube descends gracefully past the green and pleasant sewage treatment plants of London's western suburbs and approaches runway 27L. Washington DC's Dulles Airport has improved its procedures noticeably since my last visit, with immigration and (virtually non-existent) customs lines and procedures taking barely 10 minutes. The UK capital's main airport, while on an admittedly bigger scale, must have continued adapting more or less as well to the needs of the post-2001, War on Terror, no-shampoo-allowed era of international travel.
My first task on landing is to stand in the aisle and cut off the oaf who has been sitting in front of me, squirming, stretching and testing the load-bearing capacity of his seat in every way imaginable for seven hours. Trapping the hyperactive claustrophobe in his little space for an extra five minutes while we wait for the doors to open will serve as punishment for not calmly submitting to the confines of the cabin and Sitting Still like everyone else. On being released from the airplane, the procession of travellers strides noisily down a ramp and along a narrow, ill-lit corridor. The herd then turns right into another gloomy tunnel, with little portholes on one side revealing rows of docked airliners from around the world. We then trundle to the left, into yet another murky channel, with barely enough room for sensible people who carry bags on their shoulders to kick idiots' space-consuming little cases on wheels out of the way. This 100-yard stretch of prefabricated structure and nylon carpet has framed pictures of cute animals along one wall, which naturally puts everyone into a relaxed mood of sublime well-being. The next leg of the journey is along a passage that is twice as wide as the previous ones, the extra space being occupied by a moving walkway that is out of order.
At this stage, passengers connecting to onward flights are prodded into another area, where they are sorted by size and forced to remove their shoes before passing through a series of security checks just like the ones they went through on the other side of the Atlantic. The rest of us proceed along yet another dimly lit hallway, this time sloping upwards, until we reach a large, temporary looking hall into a crowd of people of every colour and creed on the planet, wearing a wide variety of bright ethnic outfits. They are Government officials, tasked to sift through every batch of arrivals, sending us into different lines according to whether we hold UK, Irish, European Union member state, Norwegian, Swiss or – for the truly unfortunate – 'other' passports.
The latter group get the privilege of joining an extremely long line of humanity, snaking its way into the distance. At the end of it, the victims parade one by one into a bare, concrete chamber where a burly man in a leather apron puts a stun gun to their forehead and hoists them up by their legs onto a suspended hook on a cable that transports them into a rendering facility where they are processed for pet food. The rest of us, after standing in line for ages reading posters saying our patience is appreciated, are eventually allowed to pass the immigration desks. I am asked where I have flown in from and take a full 20 seconds to remember. After picking my way along yet another strip of furry artificial flooring and through a cavern full of conveyor belts where fools who check baggage in lie in starving piles waiting to be bulldozed into mass graves, I get to Her Majesty's Customs. Overweight, uniformed women let black sniffer dogs rub their disgusting wet noses against people's luggage. Interestingly, the canines choose to check only travellers that are their own colour. I stroll through and out into a welcoming area full of loud announcements, even louder signage and grim-looking people waiting to greet their loved ones or pre-booked taxi customers. This is where Heathrow proper starts. It is so vile, I can't bring myself to describe it.