The Home Office has admitted the massive queues at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 yesterday, where a pregnant woman fainted on Friday night, were “unacceptable”
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Heathrow Airport: Passengers wait in long queues
Queue chaos at Heathrow Airport has rolled on despite being branded “unacceptable”.
Passengers arriving at the transport hub today reported facing “horrific” queues to get through to the Terminal 3 border area.
People took to social media to post pictures of the arrivals area .
One person posted a picture on Twitter showing a line of people packed into a hallway.
It shows a sign urging passengers to “have your passports ready”.
Another passenger wrote: “Still horrific queues at Heathrow’s T3 this morning.
“It’s inhumane to force the disabled and children especially to stand for hours! Where’s the promised improvement?”.
The Home Office admitted the massive queues at the airport’s Terminal 5 yesterday where a pregnant woman fainted on Friday night, were “unacceptable”
Have you been caught in the queues at Heathrow? Get in touch at [email protected]
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It came after a furious blame-game broke out over the mayhem at the airport.
Thousands of British arrivals were forced to cram into small hallways with no social distancing and queued for several hours to pass immigration.
Sonny Singh, a holidaymaker told Sky News he saw a pregnant woman pass out while in the queue at the London Airport on Friday.
He said: “Children were screaming and crying. The queue moved about five feet in the space of about 45 minutes.
“Then, when the pregnant woman fainted, it finally got through to someone somewhere – the kids were then put on the side to sit while the adults waited in the queue and it began moving faster.”
An image appeared to show one male traveller lying on the floor after apparently passing out while queueing for passport control.
Stressed-out travellers also said they had no access to ventilation or toilets.
One holiday maker told the news channel: “There were thousands of families queuing and just two people in booths up front checking documents.”
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dootah/Twitter)
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The Mirror told yesterday how passengers had to queue for five hours with no social distancing measures being taken.
A passenger who had queued for hours to get to immigration posted: “Kids crying and screaming and fully grown [men] fainting whilst two people at the booth serving thousands of people queuing up to the runway.”
A Heathrow spokeswoman blamed “unacceptable queueing times in immigration” on ‘too few Border Force officers on duty”
In a statement she claimed the Home Office it was aware of the extra demand and admitted it was “disappointed” they didn’t provide “sufficient resource”.
“We have additional Heathrow colleagues to support in managing queues and to hand out passenger welfare including water, but we need every immigration desk to be staffed at peak times.
“We have escalated this with Border Force and expect them to provide a better service over the remainder of the weekend,” the spokeswoman added.
A Home Office spokesman told Sky News: “Throughout the pandemic we have been clear that queue times may be longer as we ensure all passengers are compliant with the health measures put in place to keep the UK public safe.
“However, the very long wait times we saw at Heathrow (on Friday night) are unacceptable.
“This is the busiest weekend of the year for returning passengers, with particularly high numbers of families with children under the age of 12 who cannot use e-gates
“Border Force is rapidly reviewing its rosters and capacity and flexibly deploying our staff across the airport to improve waiting times.
“We are working very closely with Heathrow Airport and its airlines and we are all committed to making sure all passengers can have a safe and hassle-free journey.”
A spokesperson for the airport told MailOnline any request for comment would have to go to the Home Office who operate the border through the Border Force.
Paul Charles, CEO of PC Agency which specialises in travel, said that Border Force should have known this weekend is one of the busiest for travel back into Britain after the summer period and August bank holiday week, and urged Priti Patel to “get a grip”.
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