Heathrow Airport
 

Anyone been through Heathrow lately? How long is it taking to get from the gate out the door to ground transportation? We don't plan on checking bags; just using carry on.

We are flying Aer Lingus and it says they arrive in terminal 2. We arrive on a Saturday morning at 8:00am.

Just trying to gauge how to go about the rest of the day.

Absolutely no way to tell until you arrive. Are you flying in long haul?

One day immigration queues will be short and other times they can be E N O U R M O U S. The biggest issue is staffing. Another issue is there are often waits for gates/jetways. HBO (hand bag only) does help because baggage staff seems very short handed.

Heathrow has e-gates. If you are a citizen of the US or several other countries you can use those. There is no staff, it’s a machine, though there are people there to help if need be. In February I was through in less than five minutes. That does not count the time walking to the e-gates though, that was probably twenty minutes.

I go through LHR frequently and mostly have baggage. On a normal day I get thru in minutes & my luggage is waiting but other days it can take an hour. No one can say how long it would take but it’s nothing like the hours you spent in some US airports.

Balthy, do you mean it takes an hour to sometimes get through the e-gates? Or waiting for luggage?

Maybe I’ve just been lucky with the e-gates.. always been super fast.

There have been reports on flyertalk of periodic IT melt downs (like 3 or 4 in the last 3 months) when the e-gates were down and the queues were a mile long, or when planes could not park at gates because there was no one to operate the airbridges, things like that. Apparently ground staff at all terminals is stretched beyond the breaking point. There do seem to be more frequent issues at T-5 / BA but there is a trickle down effect to the other terminals.

I last went through in Dec. and it wasn't bad at all, but in the 6 days I was in London there were reports in the UK press/telly about a major IT problem that almost closed LHR down for two days. However when I was flying home all was well again . . . so you really can't tell.

3 meltdowns in 3 months? Wasn’t that last fall?

I guess if one is really unlucky it could happen and one would have to stand in immigration for two hours just like in olden times.

No there have been several meltdowns in the past couple of weeks. Absolutely horrendous scenes at Heathrow.
Some e-gate related, some other problems including a couple of major meltdowns for BA leading to chaos at T2 and T5.
There is no way of knowing whether another one will hit.

Well, at least the OP is not flying BA. I think I have been lucky. Chaos sucks, in ANY airport.

We went through Heathrow this week, and yes there was an IT meltdown and several flights were canceled. A bit of chaos in T5. Our flight to SEA was "only" 3 hours late, but at least it wasn't cancelled, but it took forever (as usual) for the ground crew to load the baggage.

So if I am hearing you guys right, there are some days where everything there falls apart and it could take hours. But on typical day getting from the gate, through customs, and to transportation shouldn't very long at all (minutes).

Does that sound correct?

Not really. Seldom 'minutes', though it is quick-ish sometimes. If for no other reason than how large LHR terminals are. I haven't been in T-2 in years, but in T-3 and T-5 sometimes it is a 15+ minute walk just from the arrival gate to Immigration. When is the trip? If during British school holidays, plan on a lot longer than outside of hols. Now, my last LHR arrival was Nov 30 and it was very quick - I was in Business and HBO and we got a gate immediately, so didn't have to wait for an air bridge or bags, was the 3rd person off the plane, and had expedited immigration, and it was only about 20 minutes -- but I think that was my fastest arrival ever.

The news reports from Heathrow have not been good over the past weeks. Passenger numbers are rising sharply as are covid cases. This has resulted in serious staff shortages in both ground staff and aircrew. As a result there have been lots of cancellations and delays. These are expected to get worse over the Easter break and are likely to continue through to the summer holiday season. Even before this started it took me over an hour from deplaning to getting in an Uber at T3.

You could be lucky and by all means, hope for the best, but I would also plan for the worst.

I remember reading this thread before our trip, so thought I'd share our recent experience. We arrived at LHR T2 (on United) about 8:30 am on April 22. The walk from the gate to the start of immigration line was about 10 minutes. Then the fun started. While the immigration line was constantly moving (albeit slowly), it was impossible to tell how long it was due to the way it snaked all over the place and into multiple areas, including the area marked "connections." It easily could have been a mile. In all, it took 80 minutes from the time we joined the line until both of us cleared the e-gates. Not sure exactly what the problem was. The e-gates seemed to be working okay for some people (including us), but a lot of people were unable to get through and were being sent for "special assistance."