Current Heathrow situation

[princessflorida]

hi everyone

we are flying to orlando from heathrow next wednesday. we have booked to drop our car there in the morning and stay overnight at the end of our trip so that hubby does not have a lengthy drive back on little sleep.
however, he has heard recent horror stories of departing flights in terms of delays and long wait times getting through security and is suggesting we stay over the night before our flight out of heathrow. ive tried looking online and can't see any mention of current difficulties at the airport (appreciate there was some chaos a few weeks ago)
has anyone flown from there is last week or so and can report on their experience?

[Angel12]

following this as i go on thursday from terminal 3

[Bellasmummy]

Reports I’ve seen the last week or so seem better.

We’re Friday morning from T3 so hope it’s not too bad.

[duchy]

Seems the worst is past, which makes sense as the peak time for travel is from mid July to early August. (Not sure why as I always preferred to take holidays later in the school holiday rather than have several weeks of post Disney blues before school went back)

[jojos]

We flew yesterday from T5 and did bag drop and security in 20 minutes. Really organised.

[force ten]

heathrow/latest-news...2-capacity-cap

the summer passenger cap should be in place by then so the daily numbers should be more manageable

[MrPenguin]

After staying overnight the night before once before for our honeymoon trip, we now do it every time for every holiday. It’s a no brainer.

Takes out a lot of stress, anxiety and what ‘ifs’.

Also means you start your holiday a day earlier.

With staying the night before I’m not stressed if we’re running late to leave, hit traffic, have car trouble or any number of random events that could happen. Pretty much negates them all.

We used to live in Essex and one year our holiday to Egypt, we were getting a lift to Gatwick and just behind us on M25 was a big crash apparently. Closed the road for several hours. Our plane was half empty and I think maybe partially because of that. 10mins later and we wouldn’t have made our holiday and that was enough for me!

[dan223]

I fly from terminal 5 a few weeks back to JFK, check in took a few minutes, and security about 20mins, flight was delayed about 30mins or so. No issues at all.

[choccyface]

We flew from T2 on 30/7/22 and had no problems. We drive down from Wigan (north of Manchester) so stay overnight. It takes all the stress out of being caught in traffic etc. we’ve stayed overnight at Manchester too in previous years. Premier inn at bath road was £49 - compared to the cost of the holiday was nothing! We always drive back on landing - I usually get some sleep on the plane and drive half/ three quarters back and DH takes over for the last bit (if I feel fine I do the entire trip)

[Slore]

We flew out with Virgin on Saturday at 12:45. Got to bag drop at 9:45 but had to use the kiosk to do verification of documents beforehand. The queue wasn’t too bad, roughly 40 mins to do it all.

Security was less than half an hour. All in all around an hour from arriving and sat in departures.

Flight left on time and landed early. Was super quick and not stressful at all for us.