Current immigration waiting time at Heathrow?
 

For anyone who may have flown into Heathrow from the US or other non-EC passport country in recent weeks, what's the approximate time through immigration these days? I have a 6:25 a.m. arrival next week and am wondering how much of a wait I should brace myself for.

I think it really depends on how many other planes' arrival coincide with yours - if you've ever been to Heathrow you'll know that it can get REALLY crowded when a lot of long haul flights all arrive at the same time.

I'm going to make a random stab at half to one hour.

It can vary, depending on how many flights are arriving at the same time, day of week (weekdays seem to go faster), number of staff to handle the processing, etc.

It's taken me as little as 2-minutes (no one was on line ahead of me) and as long as 30-minutes. So it's anyones guess.

Hi Neal,

Three weeks ago on a Tuesday morning it was 1 hour from plane landing to getting through Passport Control (45 minutes was wait time for PC). I had a seat near the front of the plane so I was one of the first coach passengers off.

We were told Heathrow has some noise control rules such as if you are scheduled to arrive after 6am but arrive before 6am (as we did) your plane must circle until 6:00 before landing. Also, at that hour of the morning the plane cannot taxi to the terminal; it must be towed so there may be wait time for the tow to the gate.

Adrienne, many thanks for the real-time report. An hour sounds "reasonable" (not that a traveler has any choice in the matter), and is actually a considerable improvement over my last flight into Heathrow.