Immigration
The queue for immigration was back to gate 22 late last Tuesday evening, as well as down the stairs at gate 20 arrivals. Whilst spending my time apologising to many unhappy passengers, I happened to speak to a number of well travelled individuals who informed me that they've seen a similar scenario, and in some cases alot worse, at other UK airports. Luton & Stansted were mentioned numerous times amongst others. The new government guidelines on entry requirements and the need to scan passports is slowing everything down. On this occasion there were 6 arrivals in total, over 1000 pax trying to get through immigration all at once is a recipe for disaster. The current setup cannot cope with that volume of passengers and that can be said for T2 as well. But what can you do? Change the schedules so that arrivals are staggered? Redevelop the immigration area to accomodate more people? All but one of the desks were manned so on this occasion it wasn't a staffing issue. Ultimately it can also be concluded that you are going to get a higher percentage of angry passengers at the arrivals stage than at departures. People are tired after a long flight, unhappy to be back home after a relaxing holiday and are not high spirited like departing passengers. Therefore it makes sense that you are going to get a greater number of complaints regarding the immigration process.
As a side note, I also agree that the above mentioned website is inaccurate. There have been recent complaints on there stating that the queue for security in T1 exceeded an hour. I can tell you that since the new OBC opened, the security queue has not exceeded 30 minutes and over 20 mins has been a rarity.