Clearing Customs

jbond · June 6, 2006

Some additional information. AA uses terminals 1 & 3 at LHR. BA uses terminal 1.

It would appear that AA uses terminal 1 for their European flights and 3 for their International flights. Not positive, but that's the way it looks. In that case on your outbound flight you will have no problems.

LHR is a fascinating airport. Great stores and some really good restaurants. We are planning on arriving at the airport very early on our homeward leg, just so we can eat at a seafood restaurant in the terminal.

JoeyandDavid · June 6, 2006

what about gate-wick for our return .. What do you know about that airport?....

jbond · June 7, 2006

I've got good news and I've got bad news. :cry:

First the good news. Gatwick is quite a nice airport, lots of shopping and restaurants and is more compact than LHR. We flew out of Gatwick last year. It has two terminals, North and South. Both AA and BA fly out of the North terminal. :grin:

The bad news. AA flights from LAX to LHR land at terminal 3. I checked it out because that will be our flight next week. BA operates out of terminal 1 and Iberia out of terminal 2. We had a BA/Iberia flight two years ago that had both airlines flight #'s, but was a BA flight and left from terminal 1. Regardless of which airline actually provides the flight, you will have to change terminals. More bad news, there was a typo in my earlier post, the ride between terminals is 15 minutes, not 5. Sorry. :sad:

As I said earlier, I will check with AA for you to see if you can check straight through. I'm almost certain that you can.

zebra · June 7, 2006

The last time we flew in/out of Gatwick we had miles of people movers and corridors to walk - I thought it was a nightmare considering I had a back problem at the time which realy compounds it! Sorry Gatwick was definitely not anywhere near one of favorite airports!!!

SKAOLboy · June 8, 2006

Sorry for the mix uo joey, my apologies.

that link i gave you seems not to be working, but i found one that works.....

http://waittime.tsa.dhs.gov/index.html

TheSkipper · June 9, 2006

In Chicago we had to pickup the bags, clear customs and them drag them to the ticket counter and recheck them through to Las Vegas. Customs took so long we missed our connecting flight and had to spend about three hours in lovely O'Hare.

Good luck,