A prominent UK travel firm has suggested that the long lines that continue to keep travelers waiting at London Heathrow airport are part of a “government strategy” to discourage flying. Is there any truth to that charge?
UK Government Accused Of Deliberately Keeping Border Control Lines Long
This week, lines at London Heathrow Airport in Terminal 2 and Terminal 5 have grown to as long as five hours to process inbound travelers. The UK government blames this on a shortage of Border Force staff and the inability of e-gates to process passengers younger than 12 years old. It also blames the need to process incoming Afghan refugees coupled with the summer bank holiday that occurred on August 30th. Earlier, the Home Office drew outrage after stating that travelers “need to accept” the long lines in order to protect citizens of the UK from COVID-19. Now, the government is saying it is doing all it can to alleviate wait times while promoting safety.
But Noel Josephides, Director of AITO, a Specialist Travel Association in the UK, told the Daily Mail:
“Very unfortunately, we believe that allowing such unnecessarily bad experiences to occur is part of the Government’s strategy simply to put people off travelling overseas.”
My reply is the long lines are likely a much better indicator of government incompetence as well as the difficulty of finding border force staff more than a malevolent plan to discourage travel.
But I will say that the long lines are a joke and not unique to the United Kingdom. They are a joke in the sense that people queue for hours in an enclosed space with no practical social distancing…so their COVID-19 documents can be checked. Talk about irony.
Instead of asking airlines to scrupulously check documents like vaccination cards or negative COVID-19 tests then checking them again at the border, why not trust airlines to do it, fine the heck out of them if fail to do so, and revert to more random checks at the border?
That’s already occurring, to an extent. A leaked memo obtained by The Guardian urged border officials to skip checking documents from passengers arriving from “green” and “amber” list countries.
CONCLUSION
Long border waits may be unavoidable at times, but it seems like the UK (like the USA) is being impacted by understaffing and a system that takes far too long in the first place to administer. Protecting the border is laudable but doing so in an efficient way has ripple effects that impact the entire economy.
image: Twitter / @theantipleb
How much of this is because all the EU passengers are now “foreigners” entering the UK, or are there still transitional agreements?
EU passengers are not treated as people from third countries when entering the UK – unlike UK citizens entering the EU, another failure of our government in the Brexit negotiations. Equally now, entry is easier for citizens of a number of countries including Australia, NZ, Canada and the US – all an additional failure because there was no reciprocity in agreements.
That’s exactly right Matthew. I have traveled quite a bit internationally during COVID (needed to) and was amazed at the long lines and lack of social distancing at airports just so they could check COVID test results. That’s pure theater.
Can US citizens still use the e-gates if age 12 and over?
Is Fast Track still available?
This has been the opposite of my experience. Lines have been much shorter than I’ve ever seen before, both in the US and Europe. In July 2020 I had to wait about 20 minutes to enter the Schengen zone in AMS but it was under 5 minutes each subsequent time since then. Some intra-Schengen flights within Europe now route you through passport control where they didn’t before (to check COVID docs), but I never actually waited in line. And I’ve never seen a line at IAD returning to the US about 5-6 times in the last 18 months. In MIA I maybe waited about 5 minutes, which was better than normal. Maybe the issue is just specific LHR or the UK generally?
I don’t think BoJo’s government is competent enough to do something like this deliberately.
I think it was Krauthammer who observed that if the issue is governmental, always assume incompetence over anything else.
Still not as bad as EWR during the afternoon European arrival rush hour.
Last time I flew back to the UK, I made sure to catch a flight to Manchester that arrived in the early evening. Sure enough, there was nobody else around and I was on my way in about 5 minutes (even had to wait for my luggage despite the very unusual experience of the ‘priority’ tag actually resulting in it being delivered early). With the possible exception of T2, LHR is a zoo at the best of times, I would totally avoid it during the pandemic.
I have seen the eGates closed in MXP and AMS this summer. I feel like the last time I was LHR they weren’t working either. If the majority of passengers can be processed quickly and efficiently, long waits for those with special needs won’t be newsworthy.
The UK government are no doubt playing games with border controls and travel restrictions evidenced by the total lack of evidence for their actions and the lack of transparency in their decision making which has advisors scratching their heads because the listings are ridiculous and it’s impossible to determine anything. Then again, we have the most dysfunctional government in the UK in living memory at present so roll on 2024 and hopefully enough people will have seen sense so that we can be rid of them. In the meantime, I constantly feel a bit like I need to apologise to the rest of that world that the UK is such an awful place at the moment.
No. It’s simply a failure of efficiency.