Huge Heathrow Airport Delay Has Passengers Furious

"I’ve often said that if ever they give the UK an enema, Heathrow is where they’ll stick the tube."

Huge Heathrow Airport Delay Has Passengers Furious

Image Credit: Metro.co.uk

Frustrating Heathrow scenes are showing what happens when demand for travel surges from a little to a lot, without adequate transit facilities. 

Numerous travellers returning to the UK have taken to Twitter to blast the airport, and authorities, for allowing such chaos to occur, citing long wait times and fears of a giant super spreading event as their concerns. 

Twitter user (and, it seems, returning traveller) Can Papuççuoğlu wrote of the scenes: “It took 3,5 hours to get through the passport control queue in Heathrow Terminal 2 today @BBCWorld with a sign that says: Keep your social distance! British sense of humor or lack of planning?”

Take a look at the wild scenes at Heathrow airport in the video below.

According to The Mirror, the airport said it was experiencing “some delays” as a result of having to conduct health checks – despite those measures having been a requirement for months now. 

The Mirror also reported: “Brits have been given the most freedom in 18 months to travel abroad, as the UK deals with the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Briatin has seen huge numbers of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, with many residents concerned the situation will now get worse coming into winter. 

This is not the first time there has been Chaos at Heathrow. Last month there was a “human logjam” thanks to the e-gates not working.

In January, there were long waits too. 

“Shut it down!” journalist Matthew Wright wrote on Twitter in January. 

“You should be ashamed,” Twitter user Kevin Pascoe tweeted, also in January. 

Britain’s labour government called the big crowds “incredibly worrying.”

Crowds at Heathrow. Image Credit: mirror.co.uk

The delays have been put down, at various moments, to understaffing, staff calling in sick (or exhausted) after being asked to work longer hours (leading to a viscous cyle of even fewer staff available for even more hours) and e-gate issues. 

Some people have even suggested there is another element to Britain’s soaring case numbers – attitude.

In response to the BBC asking “could it be that our variant being more transmissible explains why we have much higher rates than in the EU?”, journalist Alex Taylor wrote on October the 19th: “I went Paris/Lyon and back yesterday. 1 200km and didn’t see a single person without a mask in either the métro or the train. Maybe more that?”

Another frustrated Twitter user wrote: “I’ve often said that if ever they give the UK an enema, Heathrow is where they’ll stick the tube.”

Well, there you have it: that’s not something you see – or hear – every day.

Read Next