London Heathrow Airport

Flew into Terminal 5 Jan 2012. Waited in the Immigration queue for 1.5 hours! The UK passport holders booths had already processed everyone in the UK line and were sitting around talking while non-UK passport holders area had only two manned booths. Why some supervisor couldn't move workers to the Non-UK side is beyond me. After an hour an Australian man started screaming to see a supervisor. When that supervisor came over to the line she told him in no uncertain terms that they only had two officers. This "problem" has serious repercussions - business is being affected it makes me think twice about spending my tourist dollar in a country that apparently just doesn't care.

Sunday evening departure T1. The usual huge queues at bmi/Lufthansa check-in desks and the area is still uncomfortably overheated/under ventilated. 10 minutes to clear security. However things improve rapidly after security with everything in working order clean and tidy and conditions are much more comfortable even with large numbers of pax. Flight departed on time and arrived early. Still good airside but continues to leave a lot to be desired landside.

Departure on morning of 23 Feb from T3 - very good selection of shops both land and airside; helpful to have Travelex pick-up landside right next to the security lanes. Security line was relatively long but was processed quick quickly although not within the supposed 5 minute target. T3 always seems very busy in the central terminal area and still appears to be handling too many passengers for its size. Terminal seemed clean but a bit dated in places. Long walk to gate.

Arrived at Terminal 3 from Bangkok. When we got to the immigration hall it was an absolute nightmare. Even with fast track passes we queued over an hour to pass through immigration - a lovely holiday was spoilt by this unnecessary delay. The borders agency need to have more staff on at the terminals. What's going to happen later this year when it's the Olympic games - it will be a total farce. If I were an overseas tourist I would avoid Heathrow airport at all costs.

Arrived at T5 on a Wednesday morning in Feb and it took over 2 hours to be processed by immigration agents! There were only 3 wickets open we watched 5 underworked agents several of them idle in the EU/UK passport section. None of them we diverted to the "All Other Passports" sections and no new agents were put on duty. The many personnel assigned to manage the lines spent their time handing out complaint forms and trying to calm frustrated passengers. It would be better to simply assign more people to processing incoming travellers.

T5 has great potential to be world-class but does not deliver it due to poor planning. The whole transfer process needs to be rethought. There is too much waiting in line for the various boarding pass/passport procedures - more agents needed. Transfer security screening is the same nightmare it was in the old BA multi-terminal days. Many lines of passengers trying to merge then capacity controls on the escalator as there is a huge bottleneck at the top of it. Nothing good can be said of the screening area and staff though I feel sure they are grumpy and aggressive for the same reason the passengers are. It would not take a great deal to improve this but have seen little progress to date.

Good all round airport. I've mainly used T4 (international) which seems a bit cramped and there always seems to be minimal seating available. Fairly clean as you would expect from one of the worlds biggest airports but I didn't see many staff about and those I did were chatting to each other not fussed about travellers.

Flew in/out of T5 at the weekend and its probably my worst experience to date of using T5. Luggage seemed to take forever to come off the plane - its a UK domestic flight so not exactly far to travel through the airport. Arrived at check-in area yesterday morning and in the "north" area there were 3 check-in desks open out of 15 - not on especially as it was extremely busy since it was the first day of the English mid-term holidays and the place was heaving! I sorely wished I hadn't decided to put my bag into the hold! Thankfully security was fairly quiet and was being kept moving by the BAA staff. As per usual the flight to ABZ was late. Plus points in that they did have the gate number up much earlier than normal so there wasn't the last minute dash to the gate although no explanation/announcement that there was going to be a delay!

After a very pleasant flight home I was disgusted to have to queue for over half an hour at border control this was my first visit to T5 .There was only two manned. Surely staff there must know when planes are arriving. It completely spoilt the end of my journey.

Bad treatment from ground personnel. They seem to be there by chance bored and annoyed by travellers. Not comfortable at all. Luggage check is too long compared to other airports.