A recent London Heathrow transit through Flight Connection Centre took me 100 minutes to clear security, on a normal day (no weather or other disruptions, no holidays or major events). There was a pre-queue for the pre-queue for the main queue! The really annoying this is it is so easy to fix. I don’t recall ever seeing every screening station opened, and often only 2 or 3 are open. If they took some staff off the “shouting at the queues” duty and on to manning the screeners, the queues and angst would be much less.

On the way back, I encountered the mess shown in the video. To make it worse, one agent tells me I have to go to the far end of the building, where I am told to go back where I started from, where I am again told to go back to the far end. At which point I screamed for a supervisor. When I finally got to the counter, took the agent 20 minutes to figure out how to issue a boarding card!

Worst managed circus I’ve seen in any first world airline.

OTOH, the cabin crew on the airplane was pretty good, except they were not checked out on the new movie system, so it kept crashing.

If you’re flying business class, be sure to inquire about how to find the “Fast Track” entrance to the security lines.

And then we arrived at JFK, where we had to stand in line for a little over 2 hours, to have our picture and fingerprints taken. There were grandparents, small babies, people in wheelchairs and on crotches, business people in a hurry: just waiting stupidly in a snake like line. There was no opportunity to get out of the waiting line to use the bathroom.

There was NO way to get a drink somewhere. Of course no one cared that there were hundreds of people waiting without any water. Water that we weren’t allowed to bring on board in the first place. We felt very welcome. Not. Shame that we love to visit our NY family so much (and, to be honest: to spend our holidays in the US), or we’d never return!

This March we flew from Amsterdam to Hong Kong, and finally to Sydney. Back through Singapore and Frankfurt We paid an extra 150 euro’s so we wouldn’t have to fly through either London or the US.

I can’t believe why anyone would want to fly through Heathrow: it’s filthy and very dark brown & orange 1970’s. If you have to actually be in London, you’d better go to Stansted, Luton or City. Much cheaper also. For long distance flight: Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam.

*End of rant*

Yeah, I’ve been in those lines, not to mention the ones around Christmas this year!

I’m not 100%, but pretty sure that there’s a quick line switch we don’t realize. Think of a capital “Y” with the stem being the security line and the fork is customs/arriving passengers. The initial long hallway (the stem of the Y) is a terminal security line, but at 1:35 left, they get to the fork and follow the right branch which is people exiting another terminal, and heading towards customs. I think they come from the right branch, and make a sharp cut/u-turn back up the “left branch of the Y.”

Again, not entirely sure, but at the 1:35 mark, it looks like several people from the line cut back to their right, and don’t follow the line straight ahead.