I'm puzzled as to why immigration at LTN can sometimes be such a poor experience for inbound arrivals.
Yes, immigration at LTN sometimes can be good - but that usually requires no planes having arrived in the last 30 mins and having been one of the first off an arriving plane. When a few planes arrive at the same time, it seems to really foul things up.
However, any system or process like airport immigration should be designed to cope with peaks in demand. An example at the supermarket is how during busy times, staff are taken off stacking shelves and put on the tills. Conversely, when it goes quiet, staff revert to stacking shelves.
Yes, Stansted sometimes has a few planes arriving in a short interval, but even at 10 pm on a summer Sunday evening, immigration at STN still seems to be managed and under control.
I've tried complaining to the immigration bods at Luton, but they don't seem to want to know or consider it their problem - I have no desire to write a letter whose sole purpose is filling up a filing cabinet.
So what is the cause of the problem ?
Is it that that the immigration hall is just too small ? There are not enough desks ? There is a need for automated gates ? Staff rostering prevents having enough staff on duty at any one time ? Perhaps something about the architecture of the long corridor leading to immigration makes for problems ? Lack of queue management leading to too much variability in queue length ? Would paying immigration staff a bit more cash in exchange for changing working practices of immigration staff do anything ?
I know that throwing lots of money at the problem or building a new terminal has a good chance of making it better, but I suspect that this is overkill and a simpler solution might make things a whole lot better