Up to six hours’ wait at passport control, says Heathrow executive

The long-awaited restart of international travel in England risks being derailed by queues of up to six hours at airports, according to a senior executive at Heathrow. 

The few passengers currently arriving at the UK’s busiest airport often spend “well in excess of two hours and up to six hours” getting through passport control, Chris Garton, Heathrow’s chief solutions officer, told parliament’s transport select committee on Wednesday.

At present, border officials must manually check every arriving passengers’ coronavirus paperwork, including passenger locator forms, detailing where people have been, and proof of a negative Covid test.

Queues are forming even though non-essential travel is currently illegal and only around 10-15,000 passengers are landing at Heathrow every day, a tenth of normal levels. 

The situation is so chaotic that police have been called to deal with “disruption” from exasperated passengers, Garton said.

The government has said international travel could be allowed from mid-May for holidaymakers leaving English airports under a “traffic light” system, with Covid-19 testing but no self-isolation needed for travellers returning from countries on a “green” list.

When mass travel resumes border checks would quickly become impossible to manage using the current system, according to Garton.

“We want to see that bottleneck removed as soon as possible. It is a problem today, it will become a much bigger problem after May 17,” he said. 

Heathrow airport does not police the UK border and has long blamed the Home Office for queues, accusing ministers of not providing enough staff. The Home Office had not responded to a request for comment when this article was published. 

The aviation industry is pushing for the current paper-based system to be replaced with digital certification that could show passengers have been tested or vaccinated against coronavirus before they travel.

Simon McNamara, an executive at the International Air Transport Association, told the transport select committee hearing that existing Border Force personnel were “unable to cope” with current passenger numbers. 

Ministers are planning to digitise the passenger locator form, which is presented at passport control, but the industry is concerned that automation is not coming fast enough.

Robert Courts, aviation minister, acknowledged that getting border controls right would be “critical” whenever travel restarts. 

He added that despite industry pleas for more clarity, it was still too early to tell people which countries they would be able to return from without having to quarantine after May 17.

Huw Merriman, the select committee’s chair, said the government’s advice appeared to be deliberately vague to deter people from holidaying overseas.

“This all seems a rather clever way of making sure people are not flying or travelling by cruise on May 17, because it is just too logistically difficult to do,” he said.

Courts denied this, adding: “We clearly would like to give as much notice as we can, but that still has to be within the confines of making sure we protect public health.”