How much time should I allow to get through customs at Heathrow?

There are a lot of variables on this one.

Which terminal are you flying into ?

Which terminal does your flight to EDI leave from ?

What day of the week are you landing at Heathrow ?

That may sound sort of dumb asking these questions but believe me it really makes a difference.

I've landed at Heathrow in the early morning on a Saturday and seen queues with over 90 minutes waiting time, I've landed on a Wednesday morning and seen people get through passport control, baggage reclaim and customs in under 40 minutes.

It also depends on which terminal. T3 is still way too slow, T4 is pretty good and well staffed and T5 is still anybody's guess but it IS getting better.

I always land at Heathrow Terminal 3 in the early am and it is always very busy. The lines for Immigration can be unbelievable. All the overnight flights from the US/Canada arrive in the early am.
However, by the time you get through, your luggage is usualy waiting for you.

Mimi, Its hard to say how long customs/passport control can take. Once I flew by in 1/2 hour. Then one time it took me almost one hour.

Even though you're early at 6:50 am, it doesn't mean that the airport will be dead. It can mean they may be short staffed because of the early shift.

I'd give yourself at least 4 hours where you can always catch your breath, get a bite to eat and freshen up.

Especially since you'll have to change terminals most likely I'd say 3 hours minnimum. As previous posters said, I've caught it at the right time and had it take 10-15 minutes and caught it at a busy time and had it take 90 minutes (same time of day and both were weekdays in summer). There is no way to tell.

Passport control can be a big variable but another factor is if your flight arrives on time. Most of my past several flights into Heathrow have been delayed by at least 1 hour. Luckily, the times I have had a connection, there has been a layover of about 4 hours scheduled so I haven't missed a flight. It always seems to be that my inbound flight is late but my outbound connection is on time...

The collective answer is minimum 3 hrs.

I arrive (from Chicago) at LHR on Thursday at 6:50am at Terminal 3.
So if I book the LHR to Edinburgh departing at 11:15 from Terminal 5 I should be OK?

Also, last time I traveled internationally was 2004. Is my passport OK?

Your passport should be fine as long as it doesn't expire within six months after you arrive in Europe.

I think you are allowing plenty of time to tranfer.

If your airline from the US is a partner of British Airways, then you might be able to talk them into checking your bag all the way through (assuming you are checking a bag).

Also, the last time we had to transfer to a separate British Airways EU flight and they wouldn't check our bags through, the lines were very long. There were BA employees monitoring the lines, so I approached one of them and said our flight from SFO was late and asked if she thought we would even make our BA flight. She took us to the front of the line and checked our bags (this was during the whole no carryons in 2006 so we didn't have a choice). She ignored all the people screaming at her but was so nice to us. We had already printed our boarding passes before we left San Francisco, and had them in hand so I think that helped.

Mimi, your layover sounds great!!

Remember, LHR has plenty of shops and restaurants to kill time, and even a spa and shower facility!

click here to see what LHR has