Three Things You Need to Know to Get Through London-Heathrow's Passport Control

July 14, 2011 at 9:37 AM | by JetSetCD | Comments (7)

See the photo above? On the left hand side, can you spot the long, blue sign that simply states "UK Border?" That's the spot all these people want to get past, why they've flown from points all over the globe to end up in a mash of cultures at London-Heathrow Airport. Granted the line should rarely be this long—we snapped it during this month's great UK union strike—but if you're arriving into LHR in the early morning, be prepared for some decent Kindle-reading time in line.

For frequent London visitors, the occasional mess of Heathrow is expected. We've long accepted the fact that the passport control agents will grill us with about 5-10 questions before allowing us to set one foot in the precious United Kingdom, but for first-timers, a nervous breakdown could be around the corner.

We say this because it happened to a friend just this morning (UK time) and after 4.5 hours of dealings, this London newbie finally crossed under the UK Border sign and into the city. What went wrong? Well, nothing really. There's just a few things you must know about LHR:

· Always know the full address of your UK destination. Whether it's a hotel, a hostel, a friend's house or a B&B in the Cotswolds; you must write it down on your entry form and the UK border agents may ask you to recite it before they stamp your passport. This was our friend's first mistake: not memorizing the post code (and it should be said this has tripped us up in the past before, after not knowing full hotel addresses).

· Have paper proof of your return flight. If there's anything at all suspicious about you, the border agent may ask to see your return ticket. But who prints those in advance anymore? If you don't have it, be prepared to go through the connecting flights area to have your airline's desk print it for you, which requires another go through security and another long wait in the border control line.

· Know English well enough to respond confidently to every question. This is actually a huge problem at LHR as many international students enter the country with their student visas (check out a visa entry line video from 2009 here), but bogus visas must be sniffed out. An easy way to test if a student is really coming to legitimately study in the UK is by asking them questions in English to see if there is comprehension. We witnessed a border agent doing this with two travelers in 2010, and they couldn't even utter one complete sentence. That's an automatic check mark to put someone in a line for additional questioning and possible rejection.

[Photo: Jaunted]

Comments (7)

Return to » Three Things You Need to Know to Get Through London-Heathrow's Passport Control

This is already giving me heebies of passport control from last year. I was one of the first off the plane and got in their before the crowds really swamped the place and it still took an hour!

Then on my way home, I flew in from Nice so I had to do this and then get on a flight back to the U.S. I was paranoid the whole time that I would miss my flight but I did make it in time.

One thing I did notice--if you have screaming children, you can go sit up in some chairs closer to the front of the line. The customs agents did that for this one family. Then the kid got so unruly, they actually ushered them through ahead of everyone else.

That's one instance where having a screaming child while traveling pays off!

i know better than that, dammit.

helpful info!

What you are saying in this article is basically what we non United States Citizens have have to put up with for the last 30 years every time we enter the US. I remember flying from Tokyo to LA in 1982 and the Immigration Officer kept me there for at least 20 minutes asking the same questions over and over again, (She did the same to the poor Japanese man before me as well). Where are you going , how much money do you have, do you have a return ticket etc, etc over and over again. Gawd! I am an Australian, our standard of living, health care, wages etc is so much better than in the US, why would I want to stay there longer than needed. A lot of the problem with the US immigration is that they are all uniformed up and think that they are some sort of military instead of just clerks. In Australia immigration realize that they are just clerks in a government department and not some incarnation of Rambo. A lot are just part time employees.

you just made me laugh. i too read the post and thought, yeah, i'm glad my country dishes it out as well as the americans do. i just had the third degree flying into atlanta - despite having a visa and being able to stay as long as i want

but I now find that it isn't worth the effort. You are being watched on multiple CCTVs at every moment, just as if you were in Lower Manhattan or an American prison. As we have seen, the police in London are far more interested in the behavior of tourists in the Underground than they are in organized crime groups like News Corporation and their leaders. I've seen the major (and most of the minor) sights from Newcastle to Southampton and Bristol to Cambridge. I might miss a good play, but the best ones will come to the US eventually. So my advice to other experienced travelers is to go somewhere else, ideally somewhere that isn't already overrun with American fast food chains and where you can get reasonable value for your dollars.

It's absolutely no different to us from the UK entering the US. The only difference is that our Border Control Agents are, bye and large, polite. You can't say the same for the US ones!!

Jaunted

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