geordieladinoz
Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2012
- Posts
- 383
We arrived into LHR on QF1 yesterday morning just about on time and pulled up at T3 beside QF9 from Melbourne. All was well and we were prepared for the beast that is T5 and having been sat in 13A/B were first off the upper deck.
We got to a rather large queue at the T3 transit bus stop and waited around 10 minutes for a T5 bus to arrive (not the advertised every 7 minutes). We were 2 of the last 5 crammed into the bus and I reckon there were another 2 bus loads in the queue when we pulled away.
On arrival into T5 all was still ok and with fast track cards in hand we were expecting the good run to continue. HALT RIGHT THERE! We were about 10th in the fast track queue with the woman at the counter clearly concerned that she was being asked to move to the side and wait for someone, a visa issue from what we gathered. She was not going down without a debate on the situation!
As all of this was happening, the bog standard queue next to us flowed freely and the tension in the fast track queue built. In fact, the normal queue flowed so freely that they came to a stop as the queue had built to a stand going through the face scanning area. At this point, one of the passport checkers suggested to the woman controlling the area that she should get the fast track queue moving rather than everyone standing everywhere. WELL DONE THAT MAN!! However, the woman, who clearly should not have been in such a position (and not because of her gender) clearly did not get the message and she started sending the normal queue through and diverted them into the Fast Track lane. At that point I and a couple of others made our voices heard which eventually got us moving. Why should it take passengers to point this sort of stuff out? Surely it should be obvious to the 'professionals' who do this day in and day out.
We proceeded to the final hurdle of security to be met with anyone wandering into the Fast Track lane again, no real control of the situation again. Security screening was just as painful as ever and in no way consistent with the screening of Sydney and Singapore but I guess that would make it all too easy if it were the same standard everywhere. I don't recall one male out of the 6 in front of me not setting the alarm off for something that they had on them. This of course all resulted in further delay as bags mounted up on the other side of the screening with nobody to collect them as the queue built.
We eventually got to the lounge and the showers and bacon sandwiches just after 0800, some 90 minutes after we landed. Last time it was around an hour so it was very disappointing to be delayed when a lot of the delays were caused by staff who clearly did not know what they were doing coupled with very slow processing.
Come on QF and EK, help us get away from the LHR nightmare!
We got to a rather large queue at the T3 transit bus stop and waited around 10 minutes for a T5 bus to arrive (not the advertised every 7 minutes). We were 2 of the last 5 crammed into the bus and I reckon there were another 2 bus loads in the queue when we pulled away.
On arrival into T5 all was still ok and with fast track cards in hand we were expecting the good run to continue. HALT RIGHT THERE! We were about 10th in the fast track queue with the woman at the counter clearly concerned that she was being asked to move to the side and wait for someone, a visa issue from what we gathered. She was not going down without a debate on the situation!
As all of this was happening, the bog standard queue next to us flowed freely and the tension in the fast track queue built. In fact, the normal queue flowed so freely that they came to a stop as the queue had built to a stand going through the face scanning area. At this point, one of the passport checkers suggested to the woman controlling the area that she should get the fast track queue moving rather than everyone standing everywhere. WELL DONE THAT MAN!! However, the woman, who clearly should not have been in such a position (and not because of her gender) clearly did not get the message and she started sending the normal queue through and diverted them into the Fast Track lane. At that point I and a couple of others made our voices heard which eventually got us moving. Why should it take passengers to point this sort of stuff out? Surely it should be obvious to the 'professionals' who do this day in and day out.
We proceeded to the final hurdle of security to be met with anyone wandering into the Fast Track lane again, no real control of the situation again. Security screening was just as painful as ever and in no way consistent with the screening of Sydney and Singapore but I guess that would make it all too easy if it were the same standard everywhere. I don't recall one male out of the 6 in front of me not setting the alarm off for something that they had on them. This of course all resulted in further delay as bags mounted up on the other side of the screening with nobody to collect them as the queue built.
We eventually got to the lounge and the showers and bacon sandwiches just after 0800, some 90 minutes after we landed. Last time it was around an hour so it was very disappointing to be delayed when a lot of the delays were caused by staff who clearly did not know what they were doing coupled with very slow processing.
Come on QF and EK, help us get away from the LHR nightmare!
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