UK open for business? Two-and-a-half hour border queues hit Heathrow: BA says passport queues are 'unacceptable'

Britain's biggest airline today issued a dramatic warning that “totally unacceptable” queues at Heathrow Airport’s passport control are wrecking this country’s attempts to portray itself as open to the world as it hit out over the excessive delays faced by travellers.

British Airways said some arriving passengers were being forced to wait for more than two and half hours and that both foreign visitors and Britons were regularly facing a vast “sea of people” as they tried to enter the country.

It also revealed that official targets for clearing immigration had been missed on more than 3,500 occasions already this year with the most recent monthly figures showing 70,000 passengers being made to wait for too long.

The airline blamed the problems on a lack of UK Border Force staff and the frequent closure of large numbers of “e-gates” which are meant to speed up passport checks.

It added that a “summer of misery” lay ahead unless urgent action is taken,

It said it was speaking out now after so far failing in its attempts to organise a meeting with the immigration minister Caroline Nokes to press its concerns.

The broadside from BA, which carries millions of passengers into the country each year, is the latest headache to confront Home Secretary Sajid Javid since his appointment in April.

He has won plaudits for loosening the government’s immmigration policy and for pledging greater police funding to help tackle violent crime, as well as his efforts to address the Windrush crisis.

But he will now be under pressure to turn his attention to Heathrow as BA highlighted a series of tweets from frustrated passengers as further evidence of a growing crisis at the airport.

They include protests from an American passenger, arriving to address a London conference on the importance of migration for promoting growth, who complained of a two hour wait and “a bad experience” when staff confronted him for taking pictures of the queue.

Another irritated passenger tweeted “Heathrow’s immigration .. absolutely inefficient. Whatever happened to ‘Great’ Britain”, while an Indian security analyst posted photos of the huge queues as he compared them unfavourably with those in his own country.

Another tweet cited by BA, posted by an arriving Briton, warns: “If you want ‘Global Britain’ a good and achievable first step would be to ensure visitors don’t have to wait for an hour in an immigration line at Heathrow.”

Urging the Home Office to act, BA said the situation was deteriorating and that it was raising the alarm now in an attempt to prevent even worse delays during the peak summer holiday travel months of July and August.

“It is totally unacceptable that returning families and visitors regularly face huge queues and a sea of people due to inadequately staffed desks and gates in the immigration hall,” the airline said in a statement.

“We understand the importance of policing our borders but what is the cost to our economy of putting off business travellers who frequently have to endure queues of two hours or more?

”The UK needs to show it’s open to the world but the figures show that the queues are getting worse not better. We’re urging the Government to take urgent action to prevent a summer of misery for thousands of travellers. Visitors flying to the UK, and Britons flying home, deserve better.”

The airline’s broadside comes follows a letter from its chief executive Alex Cruz to immigration minister Caroline Nokes highlighting statistics showing that the Home Office is repeatedly failing to meet its own targets for the time that passengers take to clear passport control.

These stipulate a maximum delay of 25 minutes for Britons and others from the European Economic Area and waits of no longer than 45 minutes for citizens from elsewhere in the world.

In his letter, Mr Cruz is understood to have warned, however, that there have been more than 3,500 occasions already this year when the waiting time targets have been breached.

He has also pointed out that the breach rate for the first four months of the year at Terminal 5 and Terminal 3 is running at double the rate last year and that the situation appears to be deteriorating with the peak summer holiday months still to come.

The airline says there are similar concerns at Heathrow’s other terminals and that one problem is the repeated failure of the UK Border Force to open all its “e-gates”.

These are meant to speed up flows by allowing passengers to clear passport control with an electronic scan of their documents instead of a manual check.

But BA says that at Terminal 5 all 24 of its “e-gates” are “never open”, even when queues are two hours long, and that instead only ten are in operation for much of the time.

It also believes that there are not enough Border Force staff on duty to deal with the large numbers of other passengers - including Americans and other non-Europeans - who need to have their passports visually checked.#

To tackle the delays, the airline is asking Ms Nokes to ensure that all “e-gates” are open and to enable citizens of a wider range of countries, including the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, to use them.

It also wants the Home Office to improve the way in which the UK Border Force deploys its staff so that more are on duty at peak times such as the early morning when large numbers of long haul flights arrive.

The airline has also suggested that citizens from countries requiring a visa to enter Britain could be separated from those who do not and a trial scheme in which separate lanes are used for “vulnerable” passengers who require closer checks.

Statistics on the delays faced by travellers are calculated by measuring every 15 minutes the amount of time that passengers are spending in immigration queues.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The security of our border is paramount, which is why 100 per cent of scheduled passengers are checked when arriving in the UK. While every effort is made to keep delays for passengers to a minimum, we make no apology for carrying out this vital work.

“We are committed to ensuring that Border Force has the resources it needs to keep the UK safe and we will never compromise the security of our borders.”