Passport check times for passengers arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport have been getting longer and longer, with waits for non-European passengers often exceeding two hours, against a target time of under 45 minutes.
The CEO of British Airways, Alex Cruz, is demanding that the British government do something about the delays, saying it is jeopardizing Heathrow’s status as a main hub for arriving overseas travelers, especially those whose final destinations could just as well allow them to enter Europe at Amsterdam, Paris of Madrid.
Cruz’s protest was prompted in part by a government proposal to create special lanes for UK passport holders only. “What kind of message does this send, as we try to build links outside the EU?” he wrote in a letter to The Times.
While the Home Office insists that most passengers are cleared within the target time, Cruz says the target was missed 8,000 times last year, and more than 6,000 times in the first six months of 2018.
