BA lashes out at Home Office over Heathrow queues

BA has hit out at the Home Office and urged it to tackle “serious inefficiencies” at UK airports that leave passengers facing long immigration queues. The airline said that the UK Border Force was failing to deliver on its commitment to speed up the processing at immigration when it introduced improved automated passport reading technology two years ago. The installation of more advanced electronic gates that can be used by UK citizens and passengers from the European Economic Area was meant to allow more passengers with biometric, or “chipped”, passports, to use them. But BA said passengers at its Heathrow Terminal 5 sometimes faced queues of more than an hour because of the inefficient use of the so-called eGates. “Routinely at Terminal 5 only one-third of the 29 state of the art eGates are open,” the company said. The airline said the problem was further compounded by the arrival of a wave of long-haul flights after 11pm, when it says the Border Force shuts the eGates “prematurely”. It also complained that a ban on children under the age of 12 using the electronic gates means disruptions for whole families. BA said tackling the issue of long queues was even more critical in the run-up to Brexit as “the UK needs to show that it’s an easy place to travel to”.<br/>