Heathrow Airport slammed as ‘disgrace’ as passengers faced huge queues at immigration and ‘treated like sheep’

Passengers arriving at Heathrow Airport yesterday (Wednesday 6 September) faced huge queues for several hours at immigration, with one telling NationalWorld that he was “treated like a sheep”.

Santiago Varela’s British Airways flight from Luxembourg to Heathrow Airport landed at 9:10pm, but he didn’t pass through the immigration queue at Terminal 3 until 2:45am.

He said he experiences this “every month” when he comes back to London and it has “become unacceptable”.

He told NationalWorld: “It’s inhumane to treat people like that. For at least two hours there was only one official, only checking families.

“The "other passports" line was not moving at all. No communication, no water, nothing.”

Mr Varela is Argentinian and has lived in London since 2020 with a pre-settled status. He said every time he now comes back home  to the UK and arrives at the airport he is “eight out ten times treated like a suspect”.

He said: “It’s a disgrace of a service, and I’m paying for it, a LOT!!”

Mr Varela told NationalWorld that as soon as he jumped off the bus from the plane the queue snaked around “three entire corridors”.

Ibrahim Ben Khlel also faced the huge immigration queues at Heathrow Airport yesterday after his flight from Dubai’s International Airport.

His flight landed at 8:15pm yet he didn’t pass through the immigration queue until 11pm.

He told NationalWorld that “everyone was upset” in the queue as there was “no solution”.

Mr Khlel said he hopes “Heathrow Airport management will visit Dubai, Qatar and other countries where there is more tourism” and the airport should “find quick solutions in these times, open gates and increase the number of employees.”

More angry passengers also took to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to share their experience in the immigration queue.

Sarah Medhi wrote: “@HeathrowAirport awful conditions with hours long queue in heat with young kids being made to wait even longer . This is unsafe.”

Bhisham Bajaj also posted on X: “With no counters in sight and No air-con working... I think its time get over with the hype of UNITED KINGDOM.”

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Border Force continues to support police in conducting enhanced security checks at the airport and, as a result, arriving passengers may also experience longer than usual wait times.“

NationalWorld has contacted Border Force for comment.