In this post:
Gatwick Premium Passport control tried & tested
I knew that you can use pay to use premium security, but I did not realise you can pay extra to use premium immigration at Gatwick. Since I was in a bit of a hurry when I arrived back from Tenerife I thought I’d fork out the extra money.
Cost and benefits
It costs £10, which I think is not bad. I would only consider using it usually if you have hand baggage only as obviously you will probably have to wait for your luggage anyway. Although in the height of the school holidays, it could also be worth considering or if you had people with mobility issues that don’t want to stand in a long queue.
The main perks of the service are:
- Access limited to just 50 passengers per hour
- Children under 2 are free
- Open daily 6am to midnight (*Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day)
You will need to book at least 90 minutes before your flight is scheduled to land at London Gatwick.
Booking
Booking was not very straightforward as you have to select your flight number and mine was not displayed. There was a button for “can’t find your flight”, but that just led around in a loop to the start of the booking process. I gave it one final try on the morning of departure, and they had got rid of the requirement to pick a flight, and you could just put in your expected time of arrival. If you want to use it, I’d just select the closest time to when you plan to arrive and whatever flight is around then if you can’t find yours and it is not working. I have reported it so hopefully they will fix it.
When you enter the immigration hall, you just keep walking past the e-gates and then you will see the premium immigration lane. It was completely empty when I was there, but it was fairly late in the day.
It had said that you needed to print out the booking, but I suspected that since there was a QR code that was not the case and had just taken a screenshot of the booking in case I could not open my emails. The officer did not bother even asking for the proof of purchase, and I was through within seconds.
The service is available to both EU and non-EU passengers.
The Verdict
Although this was a quiet time of year, I have been in long queues at Gatwick before and would definitely consider this at peak times.
You can find the page to book here.
8 comments
Useful to know. Thanks, Michele.
I accidentally stumbled on this last week after flying into Gatwick. My ticket said “Fast Track” on it and I proceeded to walk to the Premium area whilst waving my ticket in front of the staff who were shepherding people into the various queues.
No one challenged it except the immigration officer who asked why we were eligible for Premium. I told him we’d been waved through because of Fast Track entry and he said that’s not how it works but he processed us anyway. The way it’s laid out, the immigration officers can process non-premium people from the regular lines if they don’t have anyone in their queue.
Genuine mistake on my part but saved us an easy 10 minutes judging by observations of when people arrived in the baggage hall from the same flight. I think I would definitely pay for it during the summer holidays!
Hi, So is this premium passport offering available to club/business pax in the way Fast track is? Or is it ALWAYS a paid for product?, regardless of cabin?
As far as I know it’s always paid for but there could be some airlines that offer it.
Great to know for my MLA/TFS trips 👍🏻
Inevitably at busy times they’ll do exactly what they do with their fast track security; feed passengers in from the regular lines.
And why should UK passport holders have to pay to get a decent service from Border Control?! I’m fed up having to join long immigration queues abroad because I’m no longer able to use automated immigration controls, and then when I arrive home I still have to join long queues to use the automated controls because everyone seems to be entitled to use ours. Why don’t we have reciprocal agreements?
Without getting too political, it’s all down to our skilled Brexit negotiators!
Apparently we got what we asked for.
Thank you for this reminder MIchele, but unfortunately LGW’s system seems only to admit the existence flights arriving before midday, it certainly doesn’t recognise my next BA flight number. Then on choosing the ‘I can’t find my flight’ button the screen freezes, after going into the site by three different routes, including your link. But I do agree with those who suggest that if one is entitled to Fast Track outbound then there should be the same entitlement inbound.
Comments are closed.