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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

The UK's borders used to be hilariously lax. In 2000 I travelled a lot. To leave, as you note, you just left.

To return, you'd walk past a man at Heathrow who was invariably reading the paper. He had his feet up on the desk. You were walking at a clip, passport held aloft, photo page ostensibly open towards him.

That was it. Immigrated.

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In 2014 I landed on either Heathrow or another London airport I don’t remember coming from Spain after a vacation

I read on a sign “travellers from Europe this way” and I thought ok my flight came from Spain I’m going that way … when I saw I was out of the airport with no immigration whatsoever

In hindsight it obviously meant if you’re European (which I’m not), I was in shock how easy someone could get in the UK !

Are you sure your passport wasn’t checked?

What you’re describing sounds like it was the customs check. Pre-brexit, if you were arriving from the EU, then there was no customs check since we were all part of the same customs union.

The usual flow is

immigration check -> baggage collection -> customs check

Yeah wasn’t checked. I’m pretty sure it was a smaller airport than Heathrow. I definitely went through the wrong path out

Perhaps your passport was checked on departure instead of on arrival? At least that's how it worked when taking the Eurostar train.

Even if they did check his passport, he didn't have an EU passport so probably shouldn't have been allowed to skip customs.

From a customs perspective, flying from one EU country to another EU is treated like a domestic flight.

If I (a British citizen) flew from London to New York, then on to Chicago; I'd expect to go through customs when I arrived at New York, but not when I arrived at Chicago.

Ah, good point.

I don't know about UK, but my experience is the signs for EU and non-EU point different directions, but either way you just go through a door that leads to the exact same place. I've been told that when they are looking for "something" they will put extra checks at the non-EU door, but if you have a US passport (I presume other countries like Canada) in hand they will send you through the EU door.

No, you were good. You were already inside the Schengen Area so you actually took the correct path, though I can see how the sign seems vague now I read it from your perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

The UK was never in the Schengen Area, though.

2 years ago I landed at London City (from Zurich), got off the plane and then we all walked all the way to the exit without being stopped by a single human to check passports or customs. I couldn't believe it.

I am not a British or EU citizen

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