Could you please tell me about your experience at Heathrow airport and how long it took you to clear 'passport control' then retrieve your luggage?

Also, if you have then caught the tube into London, how did that go?

Thanks
Michelle

Flying business class or first class you go through a different passport line which is very quick (just a few minutes.) I always find that my luggage is always there by the time I get to the baggage area.

I don't think it takes that long in coach to get through passport control but it depends on how many flights have arrived at the same time.

It has taken me as long as 45 minutes to go through passport control on arriving in the morning with I would say the average being 30 minutes...that almost always mean baggage is waiting upstairs on the carousel, if leaving from terminal 4 you have to tack on another 20 to 25 minutes for the shuttle bus to Hatton Cross while from terminals 1,2,3 the walk to the underground station is about 7 or 8 minutes....

From Heathrow terminal it's about 30 minutes to Earls Court where zone 1 begins on the picadilly line.

it depends on your passport - EU, of course, will be much quicker (even though the queue can be much longer).

it is very difficult to say since it not only depends on how many flights have landed around the same time but where they are from. if you are in the non-EU queue and 747s have just landed from India and Pakastan, for example, it will take you a while.

also, arriving on friday evening is pretty bad in my experience. you often have to circle the airport for about 45 minutes. sometimes you have to sit on the tarmac waiting for a free stand. sometimes when a stand becomes free, it is in a place that the airline's staff is not used to working and the baggage handlers have to get there and unload...all making for a substantial delay in getting your luggage.

Several years ago I arrived at Heathrow at about 11 AM into terminal 2 just after 2 flights from Germany had landed with scores of youth from Ghana with paperwork indicating they were student. Each one took 10 minutes to process and the queue literally stood still....as a matter of fact behind me was a Canadian who had arrived on the same flight as me from Frankfurt with his German girl friend. She was long since through because of her EU passport but he was muttering as the queue was not moving for 55 minutes until they finally got the bright idea to open up one queue for the Ghana students and allow everybody else, most of whom were through in 20 seconds or less (US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) and I was just thinking of the stupidity of it all; not the passport checks mind you, but here we have somebody from a member of the British Commonwealth (it still exists doesn't it?) waiting for close to an hour to enter the country with the same monarch while citizens of the UK's age old enemy Germany went right through. Makes a lot of sense, right.