Fast track immigration at LHR

Who is able to use this? Never been offered access as a pax in UC on Virgin or CW on BA so curious how one gets to use it.

My most recent experiences at LHR T3 have not been great. This morning the ePassport gates weren't operating and the line was huge. Non UK nationals whizzed through in 5 mins whilst UK/EU passport holders had to queue for ages!

Generally pax in J or F with a non EEA passport. Some airlines offer it to status pax even if they are flying in Economy / Premium Economy but still only to non EEA passport holders.

They usually hand out a pink slip on the flight and you are supposed to show this and your boarding pass to the queue minder.

As airlines pay for this service they quite rightly try and restrict it to specific passengers.

Why non-EEA passport holders only?

Whenever I travel overseas the returning locals (quite rightly, IMO) have more immigration desks and shorter lines. Yet here in the UK it seems that we get the short straw and face long lines when we get to our destination and similarly long lines when we get home!

Because non EEA passport holders are subjected to more scrutiny- why are you visiting the UK? How much money do you have? What are you planning on doing on your holiday etc. (i.e. like we get asked on arrival into the US and other countries)

Generally EEA passports are just scanned to verify the passport matches the holder and isn't fake and is a much quicker process

I've not been through T3 in ages but I think there are actually 4 immigration lines

1. Fast Track for non EEA J&F pax
2. Non EEA nationals without fast track
3. EEA desks
4. Automatic Gates

the gates appear (in all terminals) to have sped up the system for EEA arrivals but if the gates are down then everyone has to go through the manual process. Also if there are flight disruptions like there was last week with the fog there will be disruption to the normal passenger flows.


BTW the Home Office targets is for people not to have to wait more than 25 minutes as an EEA arrival and 45 minutes for a non EEA arrival 95% of the time.

as tontybear has said, its only for non EEA passports - the EEA passport lanes are still quicker than fast track immigration.

When I flew AA, they gave out the slip to everyone in F, it says on the slip that if you have an EEA passport to use the normal line.

We were given Fast Track vouchers once in error. Got told off by the agents and would have been through the normal lines more quickly.

Whenever I travel overseas the returning locals (quite rightly, IMO) have more immigration desks and shorter lines. Yet here in the UK it seems that we get the short straw and face long lines when we get to our destination and similarly long lines when we get home!

Not always. I've been to a few destinations - including in the USA - where the locals wait longer than the visitors due to the ratios.