Just a quick gripe about T5 and swapping terminals
Due to a last minute booking/error by the travel department, It was my joy recently to arrrive international at T3, and join the bus ride to T5, for my UK transfer.
Oh how I hate tensa-barriers. Getting to the bus, traversing the 6 U-turns as you walk through the makeshift queue lines, even though there were only a small handful of us. All watched by some smirking yoof.
The bus-ride is dire. Thrown about with reckless abandon, with lots of unhappy foreign pax wondering if this was normal.
Security screening at T5
(booking agents in foreign countries just dont get it, that you go through the mill even though you arrived international, to transfer at LHR)
Contradictory instructions by the screening staff. Laptop must come out, but iPad doesn't, before going through the machine.
On the other side of the machine, secondary search of cabin bags. Wait 45 minutes. What was common for about half of us for a secondary search, was-
We didn't take our iPads out of our bags; As explained by a snotty 'security' operative. When I explained that this was the instruction by the person on the input side of the belt, there was complete disinterest, and no effort to correct the problem.
Total time arriving T3 to being coffee side of T5 security- 1hr 25mins. Lots of highly unimpressed travelers from all over, forced through this bizarre effort.
Add this to the border agency efficiency, and we are making UK as attractive as the US to arrive into.
Maybe I'll book passage on a tramp cargo ship in future. Is that still possible...?