Heathrow says airport border queues at ‘unacceptable level’

Heathrow Airport regularly sees queues of three hours and sometimes six hours at border control, according to Emma Gilthorpe, its chief operating officer.

The border is controlled by Border Force, managed by the Home Office. Earlier this month, passengers complained of waits up to seven hours.

Unions representing Border Force officials said part of the issue was caused by Covid restrictions requiring immigration officials to only work in a bubble of 10.

They said this prevented more staff being deployed if the border was particularly busy.

Speaking to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Ms Gilthorpe said that, pre-Covid, the queues for EU arrivals were supposed to be 25 minutes, and 45 minutes for non-EU arrivals.

While Ms Gilthorpe said the measures in place for quarantine hotels were running relatively smoothly, with a small number of passengers, she said the same could not be said for the border.

“We are seeing significant pressure on the border and we are seeing very long queues, and that is a worry,” she said.

Although Ms Gilthorpe said she knew additional resources had been introduced, the issues were caused by “the level of complexity of the processes and the way resource is being deployed”.

International arrivals must now provide proof of a negative Covid test taken 72 hours before departure to England and a passenger locator form which contains details of either a purchased hotel quarantine stay, or two test kits for at home quarantine.

Heathrow’s self-service e-gates at passport control are currently closed.

Ms Gilthorpe said she hoped that by the summer the gates would be able to also scan passenger locator forms and pre-departure testing results, but that had not yet been integrated into the system.

Source: bbc.com