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London/O'Hare Airport Security Lines

Posted by (St. Louis, MO) on

Hi all! I will be traveling to London Heathrow from Chicago O'Hare on June 4th and returning June 10th. Has anyone recently been to either of these airports and can give me insight on the security and/or custom lines?

I've heard the news recently about the 2 hour lines in security and want to get an idea of when to arrive at each airport. I normally plan to arrive 2 1/2 hours before my flight, but now I'm thinking I should arrive almost 4 hours before. Any recent experience you can provide will be helpful!

Posted by
308 posts

Hi Jenna,
The TSA is recommending travelers get to ORD 3 hours before their departure. We fly out this Friday from ORD. I plan on getting there 3.5 hours early to be on the safe side. Travelers on ORD's Twitter page are reporting they are breezing through security today. I assume the TSA has stepped up its game due to bad publicity but I wouldn't count on them JIC.

Posted by
1022 posts

It was bad for us on our returning international flight from Amsterdam last week thru O'Hara... expect long lines. we were taken out of the secure area and redirected back thru security, pain in the butt!. We were not taken out of the secure area last November in Dulles when we returned from Europe last Nov 2015. luckily the nice tsa gal escorted us to the front of the line to make our connection.

I will try to avoid Chicago on my next trip. Hopefully next year it will be better :)

Posted by
1022 posts

amendment to my previous reply.... I think I recall that the arriving international dulles flights may have their own tsa/security. We did not have a long wait there. But at Chicago they don't, they took us on the tram completely out of the secure area and we had to go thru the general tsa/security area which is the main problem.

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