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Travelers arriving at Heathrow are being forced to queue for up to six hours to pass through immigration controls, an executive at the UK airport said.<\/p>\nTravelers arriving at Heathrow are being forced to queue for up to six hours to pass through immigration controls, an executive at the UK airport said.<\/p>\n
Chief solutions officer Chris Garton told UK MPs that \u201cthe situation is becoming untenable\u201d and the police have been forced to step in.<\/p>\n
Giving evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee, he explained that wait times in recent days have typically been \u201cwell in excess of two hours and up to six hours\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe\u2019re starting to see disruption in some of the arriving passengers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re made to queue for two or three hours, it\u2019s not something you want to do, and we\u2019re even having to involve the police service to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Garton went on: \u201cWhat\u2019s happened is a whole host of new checks \u2013 100% checking of everybody \u2013 has been introduced, and that obviously has put a tremendous burden on the officers who work at the border.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Home Office has not provided them with additional officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the committee the amount of resources for processing passengers at the border \u201calways was a problem\u201d, but the coronavirus pandemic \u201chas just made that so much worse than it was before\u201d.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cWe want to see that bottleneck removed as quickly as possible. It\u2019s a problem today, it will become a much bigger problem after May 17th (when foreign leisure travel from England could resume).\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Garton said the \u201csolution\u201d is to enable passengers to ensure their entry to the UK is \u201cassured\u201d before they begin their journey.<\/p>\n
Errors on passenger locator forms should be spotted and corrected in advance, and eGates should be able to check the documents automatically, he told MPs.<\/p>\n
This would allow arriving travelers to \u201cflow as you would normally through the eGates rather than having to line up and present your paperwork to a rather overstretched border official\u201d, Mr Garton added.<\/p>\n