Heathrow CEO Says Airport Border Queues at ‘Unacceptable Level’

Heathrow CEO Says Airport Border Queues at 'Unacceptable Level'

CREDIT: "Heathrow Terminal 5" by .curt. is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Heathrow CEO Says Airport Border Queues at ‘Unacceptable Level’.

ACCORDING to Heathrow Airport’s Chief Operating Officer, Emma Gilthorpe, queues are regularly up to three hours and sometimes six hours at border control.

Earlier this month, a mum was reportedly forced to feed her baby on the floor at Heathrow Airport after queues at arrivals reached seven hours.

Alice, 26, told one media publication she waited the extraordinary amount of time to pass through border control with hundreds of other travellers at Heathrow.

The woman, who flew back from Vienna after a medical appointment, said at the time: “I felt really unsafe. It was really disorganised.

“One mother had to feed her baby on the floor. It’s not humane.”

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. However, due to the pandemic, waiting times were expected to go up because of the extra checks, but Ms Gilthorpe said the current times were “unacceptable”.

While Ms Gilthorpe said: “We are seeing significant pressure on the border and we are seeing very long queues, and that is a worry,” she said, before stating that “the level of complexity of the processes and the way resource is being deployed” is what is causing the problem.

Under Covid rules, 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.

She told the committee: “It is deeply frustrating as the operator of the airport when you have a queue full of people and you only have two desks open.

“It is rare to see all the desks manned and we have to find our way to how we make that happen so we can get that flow.”

“Heathrow is Britain’s hub airport, it is the front door. We have to get our economy moving and we have to make sure we are capable of receiving people,” she said, highlighting the potential risk that the long waiting time could be having on the country’s economic resurgence.

“If you have a poor experience at the border, there’s a risk you won’t come back again. That traffic will go to Charles De Gaulle [airport in Paris], it will go to Frankfurt and we will miss out on that economic resurgence,” she said.


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Written by

Matthew Roscoe

Originally from the UK, Matthew is based on the Costa Blanca and is a web reporter for The Euro Weekly News covering international and Spanish national news. Got a news story you want to share? Then get in touch at editorial@euroweeklynews.com.

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