Army of Reserve Workers Allays Fears of Heathrow Chaos | Heathrow Airport

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Passengers entered Heathrow preparing to see queues creep their way around the airport and departure boards coldly telling you the holiday season has been ruined.

With fears that travel problems could persist into the new year as 1,000 Border Force personnel began the first of the eight days of strike action, those traveling through Europe’s busiest airport on the Friday before Christmas were anxious.

But many of their worst fears were dispelled after ministers took the notable step of asking uniformed members of the military to stand up for the striking workers.

Lucy Jenkins, 35, from north London, was worried about being late after flying overnight from Antigua with her two young children. “Any delay wouldn’t be fun at all, so we were worried,” she said.

She considered changing her dates, but didn’t want to cut short her holiday or miss Christmas in the UK, as she was hosting her family.

Jenkins landed a WhatsApp message from her mom warning of two-hour queues, but she was relieved not to encounter any such thing. Her family’s affairs were handled by an Interior Ministry official, but she said 90% of the offices were staffed by uniformed military personnel.

“We needed to go back for the turkey delivery, otherwise it’s going to be a very sad Christmas day,” she added.

However, there are five strike days coming after Christmas and the busiest date for arrivals is expected to be December 30.

Joe Wilde, a 57-year-old travel agent from Reading, flew in from Jamaica with Virgin Atlantic and landed on time. “We braced ourselves for long lines and general chaos, however, almost all the e-gates were open, there were still regular staff directing people to the correct channels and we walked straight to an e-gate,” she said.

“There were people from the military sitting at the desks so I think in case of passport problems they were ready. It was our fastest entry into the UK since the six days of holidays this year.”

Wilde said she waited an hour and a half to get her bag back. “The baggage hall is full of leftover luggage. I have never seen anything like this,” she added.

In Terminal 5, a small crowd waited in front of a twinkling Christmas tree to give arriving friends and family a welcome hug.

To mitigate the impact of the strikes, two of Heathrow’s main airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, stopped selling tickets on 16 December to arrivals on strike days and offered ticket holders free date changes.

A British Airways spokesperson said the airline “does not experience significant delays” in baggage or flights. Virgin Atlantic did not respond to an approach for comment.

Rob Pascal, 40, brought his daughter Libby, 13, from Hanover to London for her first Christmas with family in the UK in three years, due to the pandemic. The couple arrived at noon and were relieved to find that the trip had been “much better than expected”.

“It was just fine,” he said, “maybe as quickly as I went through passport control. We saw military personnel manning the passport control offices.”

A Heathrow spokesman said the airport was operating as normal and there was a small queue. It said no flights were canceled due to the strike, despite previous reports warning that up to 30% of flights could be cancelled.

The morning rush — when nearly 30,000 travelers passed through the border — started off well, the spokesman said, with “virtually no waiting time” in the “free-flowing” immigration halls, and Border Force and the military “providing a good service”.

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