Which Que To Stand In At Heathrow - London

[silentnine]

hi all

off to the uk for a visit with wife and kids 2morrow

when we arrive i guess there are 2 ques.. 1 for EU and another for Non-EU passport holders

both the kids and myself have UK pasports .. wife is thai

does she que alone ? or do we all que together .. will be chaos if we seperate as the kids will run riot

[rgs2001uk]

Mrs always comes with me, immigration told me, you are British and she is your wife.

[krisb]

Mrs always comes with me, immigration told me, you are British and she is your wife.

Same as when you go to Thailand. She is Thai and your the husband. Straight through the no queue no lineup Thai national at immigration. Love that.

[theoldgit]

The UKBA does have a policy that they will not seperate families so you can quite safely expect your wife to be allowed to use the EU line, then again you could quite easily use the non-EU line.

It is quite useful for the IO at the border to have the family together in case there are any questions.

I have always used the EU line with my partner, and we're not even married, she has never been turned away.

Some people advise speaking to the IO, who are normally pretty reasonable.

The people managing the queue used to be BAA staff rather than UKBA staff, I don't know if that's still the case.

[bobrussell]

On occasions the non-EU queue is shorter. If this is the case, use that one!

[howzat]

At Heathrow no problem for EU channel but my wife was turned back at Birmingham.. We were told that provincial airports don't allow it.

[XCom]

When I landed at Heathrow with my girlfriend I asked one of the guys on duty. He told me to take her through the UK passport holders with me. He said "If they ask, just say she if your fiancé!".

It worked like a treat! Also the same when returning to Thailand. I was able to go with her through the Thai passport holders gate.

[Kevin1908]

My wife Thai and son on UK passport was told to go through the non EU control.

[bobrussell]

Perhaps this topic may be worth pinning as it keeps recurring!

The general situation seems to be that the IO's don't want to split families (probably actually makes their life easier) so it is OK to go through the EU gate with the EU passport holder.

My advice is to go for the shortest queue - sometimes the non-EU line moves faster than the EU one!

[Jay Sata]

Small UK provincial airports tend to have limited immigration personnel so the will process UK/EU passports first. I found it frustrating many years ago but as we both hold UK passports I now accept I don't want to be blocked by a problem passport holder.