Would anyone care to hazard a guess at roughly how long it might take from
official landing time to exit Heathrow terminal 3 and walk as far as the
central bus station or tube, when arriving from a non-EU origin (but with UK
passport) in the late evening (with luggage)?

I know there are loads of variables and I imagine the answer will be 'a
while' but just wondering about how tight onward connections might be at that
late hour.

Thanks
Theo

In message , at 00:32:05 on Fri,
19 Mar 2010, Theo Markettos
remarked:
Would anyone care to hazard a guess at roughly how long it might take from
official landing time to exit Heathrow terminal 3 and walk as far as the
central bus station or tube, when arriving from a non-EU origin (but with UK
passport) in the late evening (with luggage)?

I know there are loads of variables and I imagine the answer will be 'a
while' but just wondering about how tight onward connections might be at that
late hour.

With hand baggage only, it's likely to be dominated by the walks (gate
to immigration, and terminal to station). With baggage, how long it
takes to get to the reclaim area, then plus the walk to the station.

Could all happen within half an hour, but I'd allow an hour. Also check
what time that flight normally arrives (it depends on many factors
including the airline and the weather). If you give a flight number I
can look it up for you.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 00:32:05 on Fri, 19
Mar 2010, Theo Markettos remarked:
Would anyone care to hazard a guess at roughly how long it might take from
official landing time to exit Heathrow terminal 3 and walk as far as the
central bus station or tube, when arriving from a non-EU origin (but with
UK
passport) in the late evening (with luggage)?

I know there are loads of variables and I imagine the answer will be 'a
while' but just wondering about how tight onward connections might be at
that
late hour.

With hand baggage only, it's likely to be dominated by the walks (gate to
immigration, and terminal to station).

You must be lucky at EMA.

At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

tim

On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:33:29 -0000
"tim...." wrote:
At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

Ah yes , arn't they wonderful? All your details stored on it unencrypted which
can be read from a few metres away with the right machine.

Nice.

Another triumph for Noo Lamebour

B2003

Theo Markettos wrote in
:

Would anyone care to hazard a guess at roughly how long it might take
from official landing time to exit Heathrow terminal 3 and walk as far
as the central bus station or tube, when arriving from a non-EU origin
(but with UK passport) in the late evening (with luggage)?

I know there are loads of variables and I imagine the answer will be
'a while' but just wondering about how tight onward connections might
be at that late hour.

Published arrival time is usually touchdown time. I'd allow:
- 15 mins to taxi to the gate an get the doors open and an average person
out
- 10 mins to walk to passport control
- you might be lucky and get straight through, but I'd allow another 15
mins there
- baggage pickup ... hard to say but could easily be another 20 mins
- walk to the bus station maybe 10 mins including finding the right stop

That's 70 mins with a lot of possible variability (mainly in the upwards
direction).

Hope that helps.

Peter

--
| Peter Campbell Smith | Epsom | UK |

Peter Campbell Smith wrote:
That's 70 mins with a lot of possible variability (mainly in the upwards
direction).

Thanks. I now discover that flightstats.com says my flight has an
'on-time performance' of 0.1 out of 5. Nice. Which means 27% of flights
are on time, with an average delay of 39 mins and a standard deviation of 36
mins.

From the advertised time, I have 2h30 to make the last bus at Victoria Coach
Station. There don't appear to be any sensibly-timed buses from Heathrow to
VCS, so that probably means taking the Picc+District and a walk (which I've
done before with luggage, takes about 15 mins) unless there's a niftier way
involving tube+bus.

I'm guessing this is too tight to be feasible? I should add that there is a
backup plan should the connection not work out.

Theo

In message , at 10:33:29 on Fri, 19 Mar
2010, tim.... remarked:
With hand baggage only, it's likely to be dominated by the walks (gate to
immigration, and terminal to station).

You must be lucky at EMA.

They seem to manage to clear one plane's pax before another arrives, so
the wait is how far back in the plane (or bus) you were)

At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

Time of day is crucial. I came through Stansted late on Monday and there
were 4 people in the queue ahead of me (it's multi-server, multi-queue;
as opposed to Birmingham, Luton and EMA which are single-queue,
multi-server).

Similarly, arriving back late at Gatwick North there's not a queue.
Colleagues flew via LHR on Monday (we had caught different but similarly
timed flights) and they arrived in Central London from LHR at exactly
the same time I got there from Stansted (35 mins on Stansted Express,
plus about 20 minutes on Circle Line). So their queue at LHR can't have
been significant.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 10:55:38 on Fri, 19 Mar
2010, d remarked:
At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

Ah yes , arn't they wonderful? All your details stored on it unencrypted which
can be read from a few metres away with the right machine.

All your details - please list them. Unencrypted - according to who. A
few metres - only with massive aerials.
--
Roland Perry

On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:22:44 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:55:38 on Fri, 19 Mar
2010, d remarked:
At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

Ah yes , arn't they wonderful? All your details stored on it unencrypted which
can be read from a few metres away with the right machine.

All your details - please list them. Unencrypted - according to who. A

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport

"The passport's critical information is both printed on the data page of the passport and stored in the chip."

"Note that in some early biometric passports BAC wasn't used at all, allowing attacker to read the chip's content without providing a key"

So it looks like now they use encryption but according to the rest of the
document its still hardly secure. Look at the number of attacks listed.

few metres - only with massive aerials.

BS. RFID can be read from a few metres away as long as you can direct
enough power at the chip to power it up.

B2003

In message , at 13:30:31 on Fri,
19 Mar 2010, Theo Markettos
remarked:
That's 70 mins with a lot of possible variability (mainly in the upwards
direction).

Thanks. I now discover that flightstats.com says my flight has an
'on-time performance' of 0.1 out of 5. Nice. Which means 27% of flights
are on time, with an average delay of 39 mins and a standard deviation of 36
mins.

From the advertised time, I have 2h30 to make the last bus at Victoria Coach
Station. There don't appear to be any sensibly-timed buses from Heathrow to
VCS, so that probably means taking the Picc+District and a walk (which I've
done before with luggage, takes about 15 mins) unless there's a niftier way
involving tube+bus.

I'm guessing this is too tight to be feasible? I should add that there is a
backup plan should the connection not work out.

I got to Victoria area this week on this schedule: (yes, I know it's a
different airport):

Landed 21.05 (5 minutes early) Middle of plane, exit via front steps
to apron, short walk to Terminal, long walk to transit
train, short but slow immigration queue (trainee), no
baggage.
Bought train ticket 21.22
Train departed 21.30
Liverpool St 22.19 (2 minutes late? Posters say it's 35 minutes. Hmm)
Circle Line 22.25 (Yes, I know, some people say change at Tottenham
Hale, but I wanted to use mobile Internet as much
as possible)
Victoria 22.46
--
Roland Perry