Customs/Baggage Claim Order After Landing at Heathrow

None of the above, lol.

Immigration/Passport Control (movement of people) - this is where you may encounter some lines
Baggage claim
Customs (movement of goods) - this is just an area where you walk thru generally with no stopping
Meet up with your transportation person.

I'd go freshen up after Immigration and before baggage claim. I can't remember the baggage claim at Heathrow to remember if there are bathrooms there.

1. Passport control. Hopefully the egates are working which makes for a shorter wait
2. Baggage claim. This is where I usually visit the loo while waiting for bag.
3. Customs. Usually a nonissue unless you have something to declare.

You exit customs into a small duty free shop and then an area where lots of people are waiting to pickup their customers or friends. You may want to check the terminal map to find a nearby shop or cafe to be out of the scrum.

Rocket has it correct, and yes, there are restrooms in the baggage claim area.

Wonderful, thank you!

This is very helpful.

the layout is a bit different from terminal to terminal... don't know which one by any chance?

Nigel,

It will be Terminal 3.

I looked at the map posted on the Heathrow website and was having trouble puzzling out where everything was in that Terminal.

My main hope is that I could indeed grab my checked bag and a trip to the loo before meeting my friend.

I travel in and out of T3. There is definitely a loo in the baggage claim area.

Without getting too personal, I usually use the facilities on board about 30-45 minutes before landing, head straight to immigration, then since I only have carry on, head straight for the baggage claim loo, before exiting customs and into the main terminal arrivals area.

This will be my plan on Wednesday.

Upon arrival at Terminal 3 - walk to the immigration hall. (quite a long walk btw).

Toilets are located to your left as you enter the immigration hall (passport control). They are alongside the e-gates but outside of the e-gate line, so you will need to get into the zigzag line once you come out of the bathroom.
Toilets are also located in baggage claim. To Your right, in front of the carousel (to the side of the exit door to the customs area). You can pop in, quickly as you wait for luggage.

Walk through customs and keep walking until you get to the arrival hall. Toilets are to the right down a hallway, but unless your person is late, they would probably see you here before you get a chance to sneak to the loo. However, timing at Heathrow is often problematic due to traffic, so a delay would give you a chance to freshen up and then grab coffee by the elevators that go to the short-term parking lot.

Wow, mpaulynsettle!

That detailed description is amazing. I took a picture of your post and will refer to it on the plane...

Your comment: "unless your person is late, they would probably see you here before you get a chance to sneak to the loo" really gets at the issue at hand, and I appreciate it.

I think I'll just let him know to take his time as I'll have to stop and get my luggage and pop in the loo, etc. in addition to Customs and Immigration...

Last time I was at Heathrow (the last couple times I was there, actually) I was amazed at how fast I got through Customs... it was practically instantaneous... when I headed home and was back at SFO, the line at Customs was more of the stereotypical experience... extremely long lines. (It also played out that post-holiday blues feeling... things were fast and bright and snappy and happy at Heathrow at the beginning of the holiday then sluggish and depressing on the way back.)

Anyway, thank you to everyone!

And Frank II, have a wonderful trip!

Last time I was at Heathrow (the last couple times I was there, actually) I was amazed at how fast I got through Customs... it was practically instantaneous..

Of course, it's like that for just about everyone unless you have something to declare.

However, there could be a line at passport control/immigration which is where you use the egates or talk to an officer.

SOME Americans have a bad habit of combining immigration and customs and calling it "customs." However it is two different things and if you refer to "customs" anywhere outside the US, they will think you are actually talking about customs and not the whole procedure.

Please, not all Americans don’t understand the difference between customs and immigration.:)

Generally , if you’re smuggling, Customs could take a long long time. But for most of us in most countries, it’s a walk-through, the only country I’ve been where it wasn’t - Russia. Oh, and they do often X-ray your luggage in Mexico make sure you’re not importing mass quantities of cigarettes

Sorry, Carol, I didn't mean to offend you. I've changed it to "Some" Americans.

I definitely combined customs and immigration... I suppose if I'm going to have a bad habit, this is a pretty innocuous one ;)

Actually, I'm trying to calculate when to ask my friend to pick me up...

Flight lands at 11:20am (on a Wednesday) -- I have a checked bag... stopping in the loo...

Anyone have any recommendations?

The problem is.....too many variables.

Will the plane be early? Will it be late? How long will it take you to get through passport control? How far is the gate from immigration?

As an example, I arrived on Wednesday night. about 20 minutes early. We parked at the furthest gate. I was one of the first off the plane and I walk fast. But it still took awhile. When I got to the egates, most were available as there was no other flight. I sailed through.

I had only carry on so I didn't have to wait for luggage. I also stopped in the loo but I would say from exiting the plane to walking out of customs was about 20 minutes.

That's good. I've also had times when the plane was late and lines were long for the egates. Add to that a glitch in my passport and I had to talk to an agent. The whole process was about an hour.

My suggestion is to give your friend your flight information and let them monitor the flight. They will know if it's going to be early, late or on time. Then add some wiggle room for the administrative formalities and they can have a ballpark idea. But more than likely, they may have time for a cup of coffee.

There are many variables for sure. It also depends on where your friend is coming from. If they are driving on the M25 into Heathrow, that is a huge variable! A coffee shop by the elevators that goes to the short-term parking lot is a good spot at T3 to wait. (the coffee shop usually has a long line but it goes fast). The last time my sister came to pick me up, they were at least 45 minutes late due to traffic conditions leading into Heathrow. On the other hand, I whizzed through the e-gates, picked up luggage, and stopped at a bathroom all within an hour of getting off the plane.

I believe he will be taking the M4 to Heathrow from the west.

It sounds like I should decide in advance how much time to leave to get through everything (knowing of course that If I leave a large swathe of time, everything will go amazingly fast), have him look up the updated flight arrival time and and plan to arrive accordingly.

Not sure why this seems so much like reinventing the wheel, as if I haven't dealt with airports before... it's just usually I am only picking people up from domestic flights at SFO or Oakland and I just park in the cell phone parking lot and pick them up at the curb outside baggage claim. And I usually take the airporter home vs having someone pick me up.

I think I would rather more or less plan to wait for him and grab a cup of tea or coffee as I get oriented.

if you plan to go through everything and then put your feet up and wait, you will save your friend money - short term parking is very expensive at Heathrow, and no kerbside collections.

Why not send a WhatsApp to him once you have your coffee, then he could park and have the shortest half hour charge.

We tend to park at the nearby Costco or McDonalds while waiting.

Nigel, great suggestion! I will pass it along to him...

Seeing a few posts that mentioned respondents liking to hear back from the person asking a question, I thought I would report back belatedly about my Heathrow airport experience.

Most importantly ;) I was able to successfully sneak into the bathroom and freshen up before meeting up with my friend who was picking me up: mission accomplished!

I did have a blip along the way, though -- shortly before taking off from San Francisco International to Heathrow (via Virgin Atlantic), the captain announced that some of our luggage was being taken out of the cargo hold: something about the one cargo hold being unusable. This generated a collective gasp... I checked the Delta app (the airline I booked through) and indeed, my rolling duffel had been removed. No announcement was made in terms of where the luggage would go or when or how we would be reunited...

(I totally get that this is one of many reasons why people like to only do carry-ons... I'm not one of those people, though.)

Anyway, I overheard a flight attendant tell someone that the the baggage would go on a different plane... I asked a different flight attendant who was passing by if she knew anything... she said that she didn't, but people keep asking her... and she certainly hoped that they simply removed the luggage and put it back because she had also checked a bag...

I was on the 5pm flight out of SF... I knew there was one that left at 10 pm. I was picturing my friend and I waiting around Heathrow for 5 hours for my luggage. I wasn't sure how it worked. I was frustrated by the bad communication. I should have tracked down the flight attendant whom I had overheard but of course they were all busy, and I know how it is to work in a public-facing job where people are asking you questions about things you aren't sure about and can't control.

So I forked over a few dollars to connect to Wifi and texted a friend via Whatsapp who passed along the Whatsapp contact info for Virgin Atlantic customer service. I did connect with Virgin Atlantic customer service via Whatsapp, but they didn't know anything concrete as regards the flight, except they did tell me that most likely, the luggage would be delivered by a courier.

I was frustrated the captain told us that the luggage was removed but didn't say anything else... surely he knew the protocol.

I texted the friend who was picking me up to let him know what happened... he's pretty cynical about the state of the UK these days, and wasn't surprised. (I believe his exact response was, "Bloody broken Britain...") I don't share his cynicism, but I CAN say that very late the next evening, when the courier delivered my bag, he realized he had delivered a bag to the address before...

After getting everything sorted, my friend and I spent a lovely week in Wales... and even got a "bonus" day when Virgin Atlantic canceled the flight until the next day (more bad communication in that arena, but that's a whole other thing).

Lastly, I told my friend about parking at McDonald's or Costco to wait for me, but he didn't end up doing that. When I saw the price tag for a few minutes of short-term parking, as people had mentioned ("daylight robbery!") I was very sorry he didn't, and will mention it again next time.

I should also say, I was very happy that I had decided to go with the REI rolling duffel in the uglyish yellow/green shade that I believe I mostly picked because it was on sale... stands out well from all of the black bags and in a situation like this, seemed especially helpful for being distinctive. Liking to document a lot of my trip photographically, I had had someone take a photo with my bag before leaving for the airport... turned out to be a good idea, so I could show the airport employee what it looked like when filling out the paperwork once I landed.

Thank you all for all of your help, and to the extent that it's interesting, I apologize for not sending a more timely update...

I am glad you found the toilets before meeting up with your friend. Sorry about the luggage.

I must say, that Heathrow is not on my favorite list right now. about a month after I got home my rental company informed me of a drop-off charge of £80.00. I had not put in the correct license plate for my rental. (I put in a V and not a Y). I also got a £35 admin fee from the rental company. I challenged the charge with Heathrow drop-off and just this week (1 month later) it cleared.

I am blaming all that on poor handwriting. I used the tag from the key fob and did not read directly from the plate. Lesson learned.

mpaulysettle, I'm glad you got that sorted!

Honestly, in my younger years, I landed at Heathrow en route to Hamburg and I got so overwhelmed at some point by the set up that my jetlagged self just started to cry. One of the kind airport employees asked me, "All right there, love?"

The other thing that happened when we landed that actually makes me chuckle to think of it is we couldn't get to the gate right away after landing. The pilot came on, he was obviously embarrassed, not knowing exactly what to say. I'm going to get the terminology wrong, but it was something along the lines of: "Um... we can't taxi to the gate right now because there is no one there to receive the plane. The people who are supposed to meet us are a hired third party and nobody knows where they are..."

I was frustrated the captain told us that the luggage was removed but didn't say anything else... surely he knew the protocol.

He probably didn't. His job is concerned with luggage on the plane and not what happens to it in the terminal. He would leave the follow up information to the ground crew.

As for waiting for someone to come to the gate to receive the airplane, that has happened to me many times. Usually due to early arrivals.

Last week, my feeder flight into JFK was 2.5 hours late due to the inability of the captain to get the engines started and then a band of thunderstorms. When we arrived at JFK, we were delayed 20 minutes because two airplanes ahead of us were blocking access to our gate. Luckily, my flight to London was the next day.