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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve flown through Heathrow one time. I hope it will be my last. The lines and the crowding to get through passport control and security were unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world.

I nearly missed a connecting flight in Heathrow earlier this year, because it took them thirty minutes to get seven people through security. I kid you not - I was seventh in line at security[0], and they were only allowing one person at a time to unload the contents of their bag onto the conveyor belt. They had five or six agents all "working" there, and a peak throughput of one passenger every three minutes.

[0] International flights connecting in Heathrow have to go through security again, even though they've already gone through security at their original point of departure.

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> [0] International flights connecting in Heathrow have to go through security again, even though they've already gone through security at their original point of departure.

That's not terribly uncommon, or particularly unreasonable -- security standards and implementation vary significantly in different countries, and in as much as security screening is useful, you'd want to redo the screening with the local standards, unless you have separate facilities for international flights arriving from countries you know do a good job and other countries, but the customs/passport control section is probably shared among all international arrivals.

> That's not terribly uncommon, or particularly unreasonable

I fly internationally very frequently. I'm aware that it's not uncommon to have to go through security when making a connection. I'm saying that Heathrow's security is incredibly slow.

It is somewhat annoying however given within Schengen there is no requirement to make passengers from the Common Travel Area (i.e., UK + RoI + Isle of Man + Channel Islands) re-clear security, whereas there is in the opposite direction.

Nowadays there's very little difference to the security procedure between the two, and I'm always surprised it doesn't hurt Heathrow more as a hub for ex-EU passengers.

That said, in the UK case at least, it requires a change in law, so it needs to become enough of an issue it's worth some at least small amount of political time.

Yeah, not at all uncommon. More annoying than that, in terms of likelihood of missing a connection and getting stuck overnight at an airport hotel or whatever, is when US airports unload your luggage and make you check it in again. Argh.

Transiting at Frankfurt airport, I didn't have to reclear security when flying from the US, but I Had to reclear when transiting through London Heathrow.

So apparently Germany trusts some countries' airport security, but the UK doesn't.

> So apparently Germany trusts some countries' airport security, but the UK doesn't.

They apparently don't trust Singapore. I was on a flight from SIN->JFK that had a stop in FRA (we got off and got back on the same plane). We still had to go through security.

I don't think it's Singapore specifically, seems like all flights incoming to the US always have to pass through some sort of secondary security. For example, MUC->DUS->JFK required additional security when boarding the JFK bound plane (and it was additional even for those entering the airport at DUS).

JFK->SIN though we could get off and didn't have to worry about any security or immigration.

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