Excrable Heathrow Airport - still (and probably always)

[TonyHancock]

Yes we take a lot for granted don't we....

Indeed! In the greater scheme of things it is just another first world problem. LHR T3 is my least favourite pre flight experience, tomorrow will be my seventh departure this year and I plan to print my boarding pass, get there nice and early, suffer the 25 minute wait as security go through every item in my backpack....again, and basically just suck it up. At least I'm lucky enough to have lounge access.

T3 suffers because of it's age. As the terminals are upgraded I'm sure the experience will improve. T5 has not been too bad for me.

 

[RooFlyer]

Let me enlighten everybody on the matter of Flights directly into Scotland. Aviation is controlled from London. With the Independence referendum this matter has become a hot topic, further complicated by BAA being made to sell some of it's airports. At the moment the only carriers flying into Scotland from the East (exclude the Americas) are EK into Glasgow. With two flights a day in and out. Edinburgh will have Qatar flying in with one flight a day from 28th of May next year. I have been told by the SNP transport spokesperson, that there are two more Asian carriers looking for landing permits to fly into Scotland. But are getting problems from London with regards to permission. He would not say who they are???
With the present Political war going on, in regards to the Independence issue, it is unlikely that London will give permission for more flight. In fact I was very surprised that Qatar got permission, to fly into Edinburgh with a Dreamliner.
So there are no cheap fares to get there with Asian carriers, except through Amsterdam or Paris, also EK's flight are alway full, and I would think they are looking for more slots into Glasgow. The sale of Prestwick to the Scottish Government (SNP), may change the situation, but with permission required from London, wouldn't think so.
So it's LHR or NOTHING, NOT HAPPY JOCK

I think the SNP person is having a bit of a lend of you (or he/she is just bone ignorant).

TK 1345 IST to EDI was one option I looked at; LH 962 FRA-EDI was another, with LH 971 ABZ-FRA on the way back were others. Like I said elsewhere, too expensive / no seats on the day.

Air France certainly fly into EDI, as do SAS (Stockholm), with the latter also into Aberdeen. LH services Glasgow too.

With LHR close to chokkers, its in everyone's interest (including 'London's') that extra flights service other centers. Keeps the wheels turning.

.

 

[anat0l]

That's true, given that I didn't actually avoid it.

The booking was made at a week's notice, for very fixed dates and was limited by me to Star Alliance carriers. Turned out that available J seats flying straight into Scotland under those circumstances were priced about $2,500 more than the via LHR option using Thai. I hate LHR, but for a couple of grand I will, reluctantly, suffer it.

Plus it had the admitted advantage of allowing me to do some Christmas shopping at Covent Garden between flights on the way home.

You could've considered flying to LCY or LGW. Both are served by LH; you could fly TG into FRA and then onward into one of those ports. Then from there, a BA flight to EDI (BA flies to EDI from both those London airports and LHR) or even the train (takes about 5 hours). The BA flight would have to be in Y but for ~1 hour I think that's OK.

Alternative is fly into MAN and train to EDI. Can swing a train to London to shop and then back you go.

You may have a couple more bookings than usual but there are ways to avoid LHR if it is that critical. Some would say if your reason can be "bought", you don't hate it quite enough.

Just some ideas, though. Perhaps your TA relationship contract needs a clause reflective of the message conveyed by defurax's ex-boss!

 

[RooFlyer]

You could've considered flying to LCY or LGW. Both are served by LH; you could fly TG into FRA and then onward into one of those ports. Then from there, a BA flight to EDI (BA flies to EDI from both those London airports and LHR) or even the train (takes about 5 hours). The BA flight would have to be in Y but for ~1 hour I think that's OK.

Alternative is fly into MAN and train to EDI. Can swing a train to London to shop and then back you go.

You may have a couple more bookings than usual but there are ways to avoid LHR if it is that critical. Some would say if your reason can be "bought", you don't hate it quite enough.

Just some ideas, though. Perhaps your TA relationship contract needs a clause reflective of the message conveyed by defurax's ex-boss!

You forgot the China Southern / Air France combo - straight into EDI (we didn't).


* Manchester / train. looked at that (friends in MAN) - didn't work time wise and have you SEEN the cost of trains !! :shock:

* LH etc into other LON ports - also looked at, but didn't solve problem of cost / availability of flights from/to Australia

Like I said, I hate LHR - but not going to cut the nose to spite the face - Coupla thousand bucks saved is real money. And yes, I would probably do it again if the same scenario presented itself.

I actually did return ABZ-LHR on BA economy (abt 100 mins) - quite a nice flight - except for the 30 mins to get bags at T5.

 

[JohnK]

Is LHR worse than a few years ago?

I have not been through recently but went through LHR 4 times in 2007 and twice in 2009. Yes it is slow especially the inter terminal transfer but not the end of the world.

I am not going to avoid an airport just because it is slow.

 

[OATEK]

You could've considered flying to LCY or LGW.

I arrived at LGW on a Saturday afternoon, along with a handful of flights from sunny climes around the Mediterranean. The arrivals experience was much worse than LHR. They had one person on handling "Aliens" and one on the line for people with disabilities. Took a damn long time to get out of there - eventually they took pity on the long line of people sitting on bags and put a second person on, and we managed to clear in about 40mins!

 

[anat0l]

I arrived at LGW on a Saturday afternoon, along with a handful of flights from sunny climes around the Mediterranean. The arrivals experience was much worse than LHR. They had one person on handling "Aliens" and one on the line for people with disabilities. Took a damn long time to get out of there - eventually they took pity on the long line of people sitting on bags and put a second person on, and we managed to clear in about 40mins!

40 minutes to clear immigration without native passport or other expediting features is pretty good.

But that said, I see your point.

I think that's where LCY wins, even though it has a very limited destination set and there's no lounge.

 

[drewbles]

Last time I arrived in LGW from a flight (from JER mind you) I waited around an hour and 3/4 for my bag to arrive on the carousel. BA blamed LGW, LGW blamed BA. Either way, it was not a welcome to the airport (although i'm sure that's an exception).

 

[rlarosa]

* Manchester / train. looked at that (friends in MAN) - didn't work time wise and have you SEEN the cost of trains !! :shock:

In May I needed to get from London to Manchester and it was cheaper for me to fly than get the train. Took a flight with BA out of T5 at nearly half the cost of the train trip!

 

[flychrisfly]

* Manchester / train. looked at that (friends in MAN) - didn't work time wise and have you SEEN the cost of trains !! :shock:

In May I needed to get from London to Manchester and it was cheaper for me to fly than get the train. Took a flight with BA out of T5 at nearly half the cost of the train trip!

The trains are freakin' expensive when booked with short notice, but they can be very cheap (well, somewhat cheaper) when booked well in advance.

 

[Dalescott]

I think the SNP person is having a bit of a lend of you (or he/she is just bone ignorant).

TK 1345 IST to EDI was one option I looked at; LH 962 FRA-EDI was another, with LH 971 ABZ-FRA on the way back were others. Like I said elsewhere, too expensive / no seats on the day.

Air France certainly fly into EDI, as do SAS (Stockholm), with the latter also into Aberdeen. LH services Glasgow too.

With LHR close to chokkers, its in everyone's interest (including 'London's') that extra flights service other centers. Keeps the wheels turning.

.

Yes , but they are not direct from Asia. As to the SNP well this is a fact, that has been check with the Tories and The Labour Party spokesperson via email. The SNP I spoke to in person.

 

[RooFlyer]

Oh! From Asia you say. Well, I'm not sure what side of the Bosphorus Istanbul airport is on, but TK flights could be as classified as from Asia...

How does the SNP classify Istanbul?

 

[Vim Fuego]

Terminal 3 was a 30 minute hassle free experience with wife, two kids and mother in law from landing to getting a bus for hire car for a Saturday morning arrival in October, and about the same to depart. We did have UK passports which may have helped, and I suspect Saturday mornings are not peak times

LGW was great on way out to Rome, even had a family area to clear immigration, was abysmal on the way back with a 90 minute EU queue to clear immigration. Almost reminded me of arriving back in Perth

 

[TonyHancock]

Terminal 3 was a 30 minute hassle free experience with wife, two kids and mother in law from landing to getting a bus for hire car for a Saturday morning arrival in October, and about the same to depart. We did have UK passports which may have helped, and I suspect Saturday mornings are not peak times

LGW was great on way out to Rome, even had a family area to clear immigration, was abysmal on the way back with a 90 minute EU queue to clear immigration. Almost reminded me of arriving back in Perth

Indeed. Arrivals are not too bad at T3..........departures...not so much. (T-7 hours for my experience.)

 

[TonyHancock]

Just to prove me a liar, the experience at T3 tonight was perfectly fine. No queue at fast track, and a breeze through security.

 

[OATEK]

DYKWIA membership breaks down another barrier!

 

[anat0l]

Perhaps the only real "fast track" at T3 may be the Virgin Atlantic one, which is basically a hallway with dedicated BP check agent, followed by a short circuit into pretty much the front of security screening.

Of course, unless there's a huge flux of VS J pax / VS Golds / other entitled elites (I'm going to guess, "unlikely").

 

[Duffa]

Landed at T3 from JFK 2 weeks ago with fast track from AA
At the ENTRANCE to fast track queue was a young officer checking eligibility. Noticed our EU passports (dual nationality) and told us we'd be much quicker turning back and going through the EU channel even though it looked much longer.
He was right! We were done in a jiffy
One other small point - I noticed that they processed about 20 of us in the space of time it took 5 people to go through the retinal scan, self service lane or whatever that thing is.

I still agree though that T3 is ****

 

[Canny man]

I think LHR is trying to compete with US airports in the rudeness olympics. I also had the 'every item out of the bag' experience. Every single thing I had was taken out singly and scanned. this took around 10 minutes but seemed much longer. My crime? A fish oil capsule had fallen out of a ziploc bag sometime previously and was in the depths of the bag. As it was a liquid or gel I was in breach of the LAG rules.

Guy next to me was getting the same treatment. He was late for his flight, and pointed this out nicely. They accused him of being aggressive and hauled him off for special treatment.

Needless to say that the last time I went to Scotland I went QF/EK via Dubai to Glasgow.

 

[OATEK]

LHR T3 Security queue, Wednesday evening 18/12 - apparently the pianist was rendering some ColdPlay at the time: