Heathrow - customs
 

How long does it take since the plane lands until a non EC citizen clears (wright word?)through customs, passport, pick up luggage and exits terminal in Heathrow?

To some extent it depends on the size of your plane and the number of passengers on it. If it's a full 777 from Los Angeles, it could take 45 minutes or so. You have to wait in line to go through immigration first, then wait for luggage to arrive on the carousel,then go through customs-which takes no time at all unless they stop you.

Hi, I live in London and Heathrow is a pain in the a**! Sometimes you can get out of there in 30 minutes flat if you don't have checked bags but sometimes the place is a complete disaster and it will take you 2 hours while they find the entire airplane full of bags they have somehow misplaced!

I'm really sorry to say that it's very hit and miss. If you're arriving at 6-ish in the morning, you're hitting the deck with the flights in from Australia which are always packed and everyone converges on immigration. Give yourself plenty of time to get where you're going.

:)

There is really no way to know ahead of time - it could take a 20-30 minutes, or more than 2 hours, or anything in between. It doesn't just depend on what you are flying in on - but what else is landing at the same time, if a gate was immediately available, which terminal/gate you arrive at, etc.

If you have to wait out on the tarmac and taxi a long time to the gate, and if is a distant gate w/ a loooooong walk - it could be an hour after touchdown before you even get to immigration. And if there are a ton of jumbo jets arriving from Asia at the same time the queues at immigration could be miles long.

So - in short - aim for an hour, be happy if it takes less, and understand it could take much longer.

I'd give yourself an hour. The length of the immgration line all depends on how many planes have landed and where they've originated.( The agents are likely to spend more time processing passengers who might over stay their welcome in the UK.)

It also depends on -

How crowded the airport is - sometimes you have to wait up to 20/30 minutes for the plane to pull into a gate

How many internatinal flights land at once - if one you're in great shape - if it's 6 or 7 - and one or more is from a "difficult" country it can be 2 hours or more

Which airline, which terminal, what time of day? For example, Terminal 4 (mainly BA), 6 - 9 AM, at least 60 min. to the street. T2, mainly short-haul (European) flights, faster. T3 (international, not BA) - 60-90 min in the morning... depends.

I fly into T3 - always arrive in the am between 06:30-8:00 half an hour to get through customs and bag often there when I get downstairs. Perhaps I have been lucky, Have done it about 10 time in last 12 months with same experience

Plane lands at Terminal 2.

I've had the same good fortune Wombat7 has in Term. 3 & my bags are always waiting for me. On American in Business & First Class you get a pass to go through the 1st checkpoint faster. I know it's not always this way though.

Everybody seems to have it correct...it all depends and the hang up is with passport control not customs..

Last August I came in on an American flight and because of the construction at T3, we were parked all the way out and had to be bussed to the terminal and of course they only sent 1 bus which had to make 4 or 5 round trips so it took 30 minutes just to get off the plane, another 10 minutes to the termainal and then a 20 minutes queue to get to passport control. At least when we went upstairs, our luggage was already on the carousel.

Anothr time I flew in from Frankfurt into T2...but Lufthansa had several flights come in just before which must have had 50 to 60 students from Ghana all trying to get work permits which meant the immigration officer was tied up for 10 minutes with each one.

I will never forget the person behind me was travelling on a Canadian passport with a girl he had met from Germany. Of course she went through the EU portal which takes 15 seconds as they hardly even check EU passports or identity cards...anyway there we were still on the queue after about 45 minutes hardly moving and his girl friend comes down looking for him and he yells out I'll see you later. He then turns and says, "Here I am a member of the British Commonwealth and I'm forced to queue while she's from Germany, England's long time enemy and she's through!"

BTW one other thought...

We as Americans have absolutely no right to complain about long queues at immigration in the UK or anywhere else for that matter.

At least when entering a civilized country like the UK we are not subject to the indignity of being fingerprinted and having our mug shot taken....and none of this we have to do it because of 9/11. Britain suffered a terrible tragedy on 7/7 and they have not thought it necessary to introduce stuff like that on their border; especially with people coming in from countries which are supposedly their friends.

Just a thought.

It's unusual for there to be the kind of delays at T2 (which has virtually no intercontinental flights) that you find at the other terminals. Since a very large proportion of T2 travellers have no bags, luggage usually comes up on the carousel very, very niftily (often before even EU passengers get to the claim area). And if you're really lucky you'll arrive with a clutch of intra-EU flights, so virtually everyone's going through the EU queue. In fact, EU passport holders often wait longer than non-EU colleagues at T2, because of the sheer numbers shuffling through the EU queue, which can tail back heroic distances.

With a bit of luck, you can be out in 20 mins, though with bags 30-40 is a pretty reasonable average, even on Friday nights. But arrive at the same time as flights from Moscow, Istanbul and Bucharest, or on a winter Sunday evening when the baggage system is choked with skis from returning weekenders, and the process can easily rack up over an hour.

Barring utter chaos (which, touch wood, I can't remember encountering at T2 for decades), or problems with officialdom, you're very, very unlikely to hit one of those T3 2 hour jobs.

The bad news, though, is I think no-one offers Fast Track facilities at T2 for premium class arriving travellers.

PS: For the record, there's no such institution as the British Commonwealth (it dropped the adjective decades ago).

And it's a wonderful concept that "many international flights might land at once" at Heathrow. There isn't a nanosecond of the day when flights aren't arriving in close succession. And they're ALL (well, 99%) international.