Heathrow Airport 'may not cope during Olympics'
 

No? Really?? That's a shocker! :rolleyes:

BBC News - London 2012: Heathrow Airport 'may not cope during Olympics'

Lucky they thought of all those things when they planned it. :ugh:

If queues at Immigration are the only failings at Heathrow I imagine they'll have surpassed the expectations of anyone who travels frequently and has seen how things can be done!FWIW, I would call an hour's wait little short of disgraceful! Doesn't any of the Air Passenger Duty find its way into funding government-required services like.....Immigration?

Between that and the PSC you would have thought so, but knowing the accountants it doesn't work that way, especially as both are payable on the outbound leg. If more people are getting routings that mean outbound to London but then train or loco to CDG or AMS for a return home that avoids LH APD, maybe there is a short fall?

Is an airport of idiocy. What is it now 50 pounds to get out of? That's 25 pounds to get in.... spent 1 1/2 hours standing in line once... won't be going anywhere near anything called Olly.

They really need to fine tune the immigration clearance at large UK airports. Today there is an EU/EFTA queue and an "Everyone Else" queue.

The everyone else queue should be divided into 'those needing visas' and 'those not needing visas'. In my case I am a Swiss resident with a Canadian Passport married (almost 20 years) to a British national. In other words of little, if any, risk of overstaying and who would probably be given leave to reside if I ever asked for it.

I often get stuck behind a flock of ex-USSR call girls, the large non-English speaking families, or a bunch of people who don't know how to fill out a landing card. I rarely take a minute at the desk, after waiting for up to an hour.

I would be willing to preregister (and even pay a fee) for speedy-clearance (tm).

I thought that Heathrow was pretty much running at full capacity pretty much all the time, so where will the "additional" throughput of passengers come from? Is this just the regular scare-mongering, or is there really going to be a problem....

The Olympics are from late July to early August when half the UK is on annual holiday anyway.
Yes, Heathrow and much of London's infrstructure will be put under strain, but it's really just 3 weeks of peak activity. People will grumble and moan, but they will all know it's a short term one-off thing, be a bit more tolerant than usual and that everything will largely return to normal by late August.

Heathrow's see far worse when snow has been dumped on runways just before Xmas in recent years and swathes of flights have been cancelled. People will cope.

Larger capacity aeroplanes. For example SQ is going to A380s for all of their 3 daily flights. I would imagine that a number of European airlines are going to be substituting some wide-bodies for their regular flights.

In addition a lot more visitors, from visa required countries, are going to be coming increasing the average dwell time significantly.

While I recommend avoiding Heathrow at the best of times, these will not be the best of times. You would be insane to enter the UK here. Try Bristol, or Southampton, or the Orkneys.

This is a fairly big political issue in the UK right now, so I suspect they wil throw everything they have at it to avoid negative stories and pictures of big queues during the Olympics.

Then once the Olympic visitors have gone home we will be back to the usual mess and nothing will change except that it will continue to get worse. Heathrow is a disgrace.

I thought that Heathrow was pretty much running at full capacity pretty much all the time

In fact most of the infrastructure of the UK - internal transport, utilities, health, welfare - is running at full capacity and the slightest little thing throws it all into chaos. And the Olympics isn't slight nor little.....

davidjohnson6 -

Well, it may just be for three weeks for you, but for the majority of people who live and work in London it's for a very great deal longer! Include the paralympics for a start!

Already large numbers of London businesses are being "encouraged" to get their employees to "work from home" for the duration - that will be really good for productivity! Recent news stories have highlighted the enormous disruption to businesses close to the "exclusion zone" which will effectively be shut down by the restrictions on access for the majority of normal trading hours. Many think they won't survive!

Add to that the fact that many central London businesses which depend on tourism have such a downturn in advance bookings for the summer that they are shutting down; include many London theatres in this.

I live in (outer) London, and I won't be going anywhere near my usual "haunts" for the duration, and taking my spending elsewhere. Hardly good for the "recovery"! And believe me, I'm not alone!

The problem with all this is that the politicos HAVE to talk it up. Men who ride tiger can never dismount. This ones going to bite them!

rgs - I live in zone 4 in London.
Because schools will be on holiday during the Olympics and Paralympics, many families may well be on the beach anyway. A lot of people who might normally have spent their annual holiday touring the UK will expect the Olympics to cause chaos and decide to go to a different country instead. Finally, I'm expecting that because of the Olympics, people will be a little more tolerant of transport snarl-ups, e.g. at Heathrow.
Fianlly, while the Paralympics involve the same level of logistics, I would expect that the Olympics will be the bigger draw to many of the crowds.

Maybe immigration at Heathrow takes an hour rather than 10 mins - this is not the end of the world
The point I'm trying to make, is that while Heathrow and London's infrastructure will be stressed, it'll cope - I'm not expecting any huge failures, and I think the story about Heathrow not coping is just a journalist trying to put together some words to make a story that attracts eyeballs.

As to whether the Olympics are *desirable* for the economy, that's a completely different subject !

I admire your optimism David but this week has seen, at times, two hour plus queues to get through immigration at one of the Heathrow Terminals ( and the source for that information is personal observation by myself and colleagues - and before you ask the obvious question I emphasise that non of us is UK Border Agency Staff)). I can't see any reason for the situation improving this side of July unless more Border staff are put in place on the right desks at the right time of day. The situation hasn't been helped by the brilliant :sad: timing of the phasing out the IRIS system, which has forced more UK passport holders into going through manual processing. So, no, sadly, I don't think this is

Where will they get them from? How, where, and by whom will they be trained in time? What security clearance will they get.

Given that the Home Office has a great track record in employing illegal aliens, I do not expect that standards will be very high. I can see this as heralding a wave of illegal immigrants who will take advantage of the pressure under which the UKBA staff will find themselves, and that's without even taking into account athletes and spectators who enter the country legally and overstay and disappear into the cesspit.

Tableview

Fair questions, whilst not a fan of the newspaper it was the first relevant and vaguely accurate link that came to hand:

UK Border Agency expects to axe 5,000 jobs | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Article written in 2010......

They will doubtless have planned to schedule staff in from other airports (GLA/EDI/BRS/etc) and have hotels booked. So LHR won't be the only place with longer queues. Just a guess but there is nowhere else to get them. Some mgmt will go on the desks too.

By the way, it's not just the Paralympics that extend the date on, it's the arrival of all the officials, contestants, medical, support and govt hangers on from dozens of countries arrives in an increasing stream, that brings the date forward too. It's not just 'three weeks'.

For Paralympics, multiply number of contestants by x, reduce spectators by y - not sure what the actual factor is, but it is a different loading compared to the main event due to all the different categories.

Even with a peak loading during the 100m final, London should still be able to cope, as many cities far smaller have held the Olympics in the past. At it's busiest, what effect is 100k on a system that handles 3m+ people per day - surely the loading problems are the pinch-points around the event locations and key junctions.

I believe the govt is claiming hs2 will also result in an extra 100k or so visitors to London each day - but only around 2% extra load on the tube (network wide). Simples!

Two things worry me about this. The fact that the chaos will be nationwide means that the potential for illegal entries is increased, and as for management going on the desks, they're the bunch of bozos that caused all the problems previously and are probably less competent than the workers.

Much as I dislike the Israelis, I have enormous respect for the way they do things, and I'd get Mossad to do it. It would be done with surgical precision and not the least worry about upsetting people on grounds of political incorrectness.

Having waited for 65 minutes at Chicago with only 2 immigration desks manned for aliens, Heathrow cannot claim to be the worst. But London and its airports during the Olympic money wasting farce are to be avoided at all costs.

'Here, Here' Radeng. If I had the time and money, I would leave the country for two months and stay in the smallest atoll possible. I won't start on the subject of the stupidity of the Olympics, because I'll never stop. The one thing it is not about is sport. :ugh:

TV - maybe, but isn't the purpose of Mossad to stop the "undesirables" from getting on the a/c in the first place? Too late by the time you get to immigration, surely? I understand the Dutch also have a no nonsense attitude to immigration.

They've turned off the fountains in Trafalgar Square, so I'm not going. (most fountains in this world re-cycle their water but apparently Thames Water prefers to bill)

:eek::eek::eek:

How Sad, Too Bad, Never Mind.:ooh::ooh:

I am actually hoping that a complete meltdown occurs and lasts for several weeks, as it will take something of this extreme magnitude to MAYBE make our Lords & Masters realise that supporting & encouraging a single mega-hub in the bottom right hand corner of the country while the rest is left to wither on the vine is a truly stupid idea.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

Despite the dogma - every thing & every person DOES NOT have to transit London.

I would like to see that every time the EU queue exceeds 10 minutes, the Home Secretary and the top two levels of the Border Agency get a public flogging.

But I am a liberal......

Donkey - it is certainly a shame that there are not more commercial passenger flights from the UK regions. Were airlines to ask for slots at any of these airports, it is likely that they would be given a positive response. I imagine also that the people running route development at many of these airports would be only too happy to help set up new routes. I imagine that when, for example, Azerbaijan Air began talking to ABZ management, they were given strong encouragement.

The only thing missing from the current status quo is airlines who actively want to fly to/from the UK regions rather than London and sufficient passengers willing to pay enough in airfares to let said airlines make a profit.

Unfortunately it's still the same UKBA outside of London.

Waited over 1hr coming into MAN this weekend, and could write for that long on the systemic and mangement failings viewed from that queue. Nothing to do with job losses or funding cuts - both staff and expensive technology investement were clearly badly managed for coping with peak (holiday season) load.

The 1hr+ wait was in the native / EU queue of course, the Johnny Foreigner queue was observed at about 5 mins max.

You could easily conclude that UKBA's aim is to admit foreigners as easily as possible while making it so miserable for UK citizens to return that they don't bother, but I'd go with Hanlons razor against that. If UKBA ever invite you for a drink I wouldn't bother going, even if the venue is a brewery...

The UKBA staff are as hacked off as the travellers by it all. They brought back newly retired people over Easter and paid them more, despite the denials by UKBA manager on the radio.

What is so annoying is the denial by the politicians of any real problem and the refusal to bring to book those at the top level who are responsible.

I hear they are none too fond of you either, Capetonian - sorry:Tableview. (I checked your file for you and both names came up.)

I can't say I'm too worried. I have no plans to go there any time soon, or ever. It's around number 200 (out of 196) the list of countries I don't wish to visit.

Of course they could revert to splitting the EU queue back into two as it used to be - one for us Brits and one for the rest of the EU. And revert to a quick visual check of a Brit's passport, rather than the time consuming scan into the machine process. After all they have access to the passenger manifests and should be able to use their computers to identify anyone of interest. And if they still need to scan why not adopt the supermarket approach and place several scanners in the queue lines for us to do that job for them. Anyone the computer flags as of interest in each line would be flagged on their screen... It's basic system engineering really.

But I suspect the mighty EU would get upset at the unequal treatment of it's citizens (Shengen is of course a treaty so that's all right). And the politicos (who no doubt manage to avoid the pain of UKBA queues) wouldn't appreciate the possibility of a member of the press reporting success in passing through immigration on a grandma's passport.

But the British travelling public, and certainly those of us who travel often, but be delighted.

Haven't a clue. Do you really want to go into the 'others' line when you travel to the EU/EEA? As an 'other' national I would suggest that you don't.

infrequentflyer789 Why didn't you join the 'other's queue when it was down to 5 mins or so. My British wife has often joined me there when that queue was shorter, which is almost always the case at BRS.

ExXB Interesting point - you are predicting retaliation.

My travel is usually long haul. Most of my destinations offer premium passengers a "priority" service or, in the case of my most frequent destination, a frequent visitor card and finger print based clearance through electronic gates. Of course these are all destinations to the east of Europe...

My EU travel last year was Spain - PMI - where the non Shengan arrivals were dumped in a corridor and you couldn't work out which was "Others" until you got to the end of the (admittedly short) queue but it didn't matter as there were no jobsworths sending you back; and Finland where I had a pleasantly brief encounter with a facial recognition machine. Not enough experience, I'm afraid, to understand what it might be like to be an "Other".

Admit it did cross my mind. You've got a legit reason travelling together, whereas I suspect we'd have been sent back by a jobsworth at the end of it (marshalling the queue being a more important role than processing people to prevent the queue in the first place).

I sometimes argue with the jobsworths but mostly at airports I sit back and take it, particularly when travelling with kids who may copy you later and may not appreciate the difference between arguing with immigration on the way back in and arguing with security on the way out.:(

[ perrennial cold-sweat question - do you explain to the kids why not to make jokes/comments about bombs in security line, in the knowledge that that may lead them to try it just to see if dad was right... or do you say nothing and hope they don't decide to try it unprompted ]

Thought I'd add this link in here, rather than yet another thread:

BBC News - London 2012: Air traffic chief speaks of challenge

In CH the two queues are; EU/EEA/CH/diplomats and All passports. This implies than any of the first can go to the second. I honestly can't remember if there is equivalent signing at UK airports, or if says all 'other' passports. I'll have a closer look next time.

You perhaps could first of all apologise for being in the wrong queue and thank him/her profusely for allowing your transgression before they get a word in edgewise. And also promise never to post your experience on an aviation pilots forum. :ok:

I wonder why only the immigration queues are being emphasised.

Does anywhere else have such constant inbound holding, and has done for the past 20 years or more ?

Does anywhere else regularly have nobody sent to turn on the stand guidance so inbounds have to wait blocking the taxyway ? This is a Heathrow specialty as nowhere else have I come across it.

Does anywhere else have to rip all the electrical wiring out of the ceilings in the terminal every few months and then leave it untouched for weeks ?

Did anywhere else ban hotel buses from the airport, replace them with a paid-for service offered as a concession to a contractor, and then let the buses consistently have long gaps in their operation because the timetable took no account of any of the constant daily traffic congestion ?

Does any other major airport have their management focused on nothing other than siphoning huge amounts of cash out of the system to send to HQ in Spain, to meet interest payments on the ridiculously excessive amount they borrowed to buy the place in a fit of megalomania ?

Does any other country have a Secretary of State for Transport, responsible for aviation, who comes across as an overpromoted school leaver intern who doesn't know one end of an aircraft from the other ?

Have you ever noticed the number of staff just sitting around? Apparently waiting for their next task, but nevertheless just sitting there?

Have you ever noticed the convoluted path that you have to take from A to B and all of the expensive (and apparently no longer free of duty) shops on the way.

...

As I have said before, BAA = Bloody Awful Airports

Of course, we don't have to wait for the Olympics to have problems at EGGL ... :hmm:
BBC News - Questions over queues at Heathrow Airport

Note 'cleared overnight' !!

I really don't understand why, whenever I enter an airport in the UK (BAA or not) they only ever have around half (or less) of the passport control desks open and ready. Why build so many and then not bother to use them? UKBA should be ashamed of the welcome they give to people in the UK. I know nowhere is perfect but I can't recall ever waiting more than around 30 minutes to enter any other country and that includes the USA.

Not used LHR to enter the UK for a while, but had waits of up to 45 minutes to one hour at LTN, EDI and LGW in the past year on numerous occasions. On one particular night, about a week before Christmas I remember landing at EDI from AMS and there being 2 immigration officers on duty. :ugh: