secret' backdoor queue-jumping service

[OilSheikh]

We get boarding cards before we even land at LHR!

[Rave]

Bloody Windows update decided to reset my computer when I looked away for about 1 minute halfway through posting my reply to this. I couldn't leave it alone, but my reply might not be as well considered and eloquent as it otherwise might have been, given that I'm starting work at 6.30am tomorrow.

Yes, and no. It's a way for those that paid for a different class of ticket, rather than those paying more for a given ticket. I never paid for Fastrak - it just came with the ticket class.

You paid for the ticket. Fastrak came as a part of that ticket. Therefore you paid for it. To suggest otherwise is, IMO, simply erroneous.

It may have been a minor or even nonexistent factor in your decision about whether to pay for Business or First class rather than Economy (or flying by a budget airline). But you clearly paid for the privilege of getting through immigration faster than the rest of us.

Unless, of course, the UK Borders Agency doesn't actually get a cut from providing the Fastrak service, and instead simply chooses to give it away to those it perceives to be a better class of punter. Which IMO would be even more of a scandal!

Again, nope. It depends what you do and how you do it.
Paying police or fire service for priority, well yeah, illegal .... except in certain cases, like paying for football match security. Paying for private security or a private fire service? Entirely legal.

....or for private healthcare etc. etc.

I get it. The point is that being able to pay for services above and beyond those which the state provides does not exempt one from paying for them through taxes. In theory, in this country, taxes are levied according to one's ability to pay (and for the record, my most recent P60 suggests I just breached the 40% bracket this year), whereas services are allocated, within budgetary contraints, according to need.

As far as I'm concerned, everyone (or at the very least, every UK citizen) has an equally pressing need to re-enter the country when they present themselves at the border, at least in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary.

Money buys all sorts of things, if you've enough of it. Ditto access to fast divorce service .... when it's fast because you have an army of lawyers, all of whom are top class. Can you jump a list? No. Can you deal with all the necessary processes a lot faster by throwing money and resources at it? Yup.

Fine. Of course money buys a generally enhanced standard of living. But as far as I'm aware, someone who was poor but equally motivated to get their divorce finalised could do all the work themselves, and then should have a reasonable expectation that the court will hear their case in the strict order that final papers were submitted.

I would be vehemently against a 'priority justice service', just as I'm vehemently against a priority immigration service.

You're entitled to your choice. You choose to holiday abroad. I choose not to. You choose to not use business class. I choose to fly business class (or first) whenever appropriate, and not just for dodging queues. It's primarily about comfort, especially as it's usually long-haul.

So far, so 100% agreed, since we're using a private service subject to cutthroat competition.

But just how do airports run? Mainly, private companies run the airport,[ with the airlines as customers. And the airlines want to fill as many of their seats with premium-paying passengers as possible, and to do that, they need to offer them benefits that justify it.

Yes, but private companies don't run immigration*. As a paying punter at the airport you have a choice of one provider to actually allow you into the country. Thus any mention of competition is entirely spurious in this case.

*Or at least not in any meaningful sense- I CBA to research but it's possible that G4S or Serco run some aspects of it, but that's not true competition, it is a government awarded specific monopoly.

And so- is it the government's job to offer their connivance to airlines to allow them to bolster their profit margins? Again, I would have to say, emphatically not!

And I might add, premium tickets are one of the things that makes economy class the price it is on scheduled routes.

Fine. I'm not poor, I fly economy for moral reasons, if the price of economy tickets goes up a trivial amount as a result of the consequences of my argument against backdoor quewe jumping I really don't give a monkeys. In any case I daresay it really is a tiny fraction of the additional cost of giving every business class passenger twice as much space on the aeroplane.

So .... just like police can offer extra cover for a football match,

I don't think they 'offer' extra cover, rather they provide extra cover and expect the football clubs to cover the cost. When (presumably, given the cost of a ticket nowadays) nearly all the match attendees being 'protected' by this increased level of cover are taxpayers, I for one doubt the sense and morality of this. Owning a football club is hardly a recipe for endless riches. But that's an argument for another day .

why should a airport operator not pay for extra staff for Fastrak to offer a service to it's customers, the airlines. No doubt government does well out of it, charging for those staff at a premium. And, it keeps even more people out of the queues you're in. You aren't suffering because those with high-priced tickets don't have to stand in long lines, and the only reason they don't is that there aren't that many paying for high-priced tickets.

Well, if it's that simple, why don't the UK Borders Agency simply make it available to everyone, regardless of what class of airline ticket they have bought? Why not have a 'pay an extra £10 to jump the quewe' lane? As far as I know, First / Business class passengers pay no extra duties / fuel levies in any other way (though I daresay they pay more VAT). I suspect that they reason that they don't do it is because to do so would expose us as every bit as corrupt as the third world countries where nothing happens unless you pay someone off. But if you've got a better explanation as to why it works this way I'm all ears.

And Fastrak doesn't give you any different service by immigration. They still do the same passport checks, etc. It just means you don't spend as long queueing to get there. Or, more often, you don't queue at all.

The same applies to boarding a plane. First class board first. Why? Because they paid a healthy premium for, among other things, doing so.

Just for the sake of completeness, I'll say again: totally and utterly irrelevant.

Even the budget airlines have now figured out that idiots can be conned into paying an extra 20 quid for their ticket if they get to board the plane first. There are (I'm guessing) about 18 seats on an A320 that have more legroom because they're by an emergency exit or at the front. But you'll usually get about 30 people in the 'priority' quewe, of whom clearly 12 have paid for nothing more than getting to spend an extra 10 minutes in a normal cramped seat that they were guaranteed to get anyway.

I hustle a bit to get on a budget flight just so that I can sit with my wife and/or get a window seat. But If I'm flying on my own I really don't give a monkeys, in fact every minute I'm stood at the departure gate is a minute that I'm not suffering restricted leg and arm room.

But if you REALLY want privilege, you don't fly first class. You fly private jet. You very likely do it through a private airfield, and if not, you do it through a private terminal. Again, money buys access.

It should not buy priviledged access to a monopoly government service. For the Nth and (hopefully) final time.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, Rave. Just that it's the way of the world, in so many ways, little and large, and I don't see that changing any time soon. So I'd suggest .... get over it. The rich , powerful and privileged operate in a different way to the rest of us. Good luck changing it, Brother Rave.

I am emphatically not any kind of communist or even (any more) a left winger, so call me 'Brother Rave' all you like, as it's an obviously very cheap shot. I earn far more than the median wage for the UK as a whole and roughly the median for London, which isn't bad since I'm 32 and thus theoretically less than a third of the way through my career.

I do, however, expect the government to treat all of its subjects equally and dispassionately. That has clearly not been the case. I think I've a right to object to that, and I'd call it 'egalitarianism'.

Looking forward to your objections.

[TooNice]

Well, I've just been to look, and it seems you can only pay extra to actually visit a passport office in person and have your application expedited that way.

Actually, there are 3/4 options:

1a. Normal application by post (minimum 3 weeks, not guaranteed).
1b. Same as 1a., but going through the "Check & Send" service for £8.75 at the post office where they check your photographs and application (minimum 2 weeks, not guaranteed).
2. Fast-track submitted in person, returned by post, processed within a week (guaranteed, subject to T&C).
3. Premium submitted in person, processed and returned in person on the same day (guaranteed, subject to T&C).

The fast-track / premium service is available to anyone willing to pay for it, and is separate from emergency applications overseas.

But really, I do not see what the big deal with as long as it is queue jumping and not immigration skipping. It makes no difference to me, since I'd much rather wait 3 hours if I had to, than spend £1800. But I also prefer having the option than not having it. If you can afford £1800 to jump queues, you can probably fly business / first, which means that you are probably disembarking first. If there is a scam anywhere, it would be the cost of the service. But given that we are dealing with a willing buyer, it's not even a scam in that sense.

[Rave]

But really, I do not see what the big deal with as long as it is queue jumping and not immigration skipping. It makes no difference to me, since I'd much rather wait 3 hours if I had to, than spend £1800. But I also prefer having the option than not having it. If you can afford £1800 to jump queues, you can probably fly business / first, which means that you are probably disembarking first. If there is a scam anywhere, it would be the cost of the service. But given that we are dealing with a willing buyer, it's not even a scam in that sense.

The problem is twofold- 1) I don't believe that there should be the option to pay for priority access to government services and 2) that this service is apparently not available to anyone who's not flying First or Business.

Since you apparently don't have a problem with the idea of being able to pay for priority access to government services, do you have any thoughts as to where the line should be drawn? Would you be O.K. with people being able to pay extra for a faster ambulance service if they're having a heart attack? Because IMO it's the thin end of the wedge.

[jim]

The problem is twofold- 1) I don't believe that there should be the option to pay for priority access to government services and 2) that this service is apparently not available to anyone who's not flying First or Business.

Since you apparently don't have a problem with the idea of being able to pay for priority access to government services, do you have any thoughts as to where the line should be drawn? Would you be O.K. with people being able to pay extra for a faster ambulance service if they're having a heart attack? Because IMO it's the thin end of the wedge.

I don't like the idea too much, but I do see merit in it as an additional (and optional) tax for the rich. They can't complain, because they don't have to pay, but it should in the long-term mean that there's a decreased need to tax everybody else. On that basis I'd be happy to widen it - if people want to pay triple the council tax and get their road cleaned twice as often as everybody else, then as long as a profit is being made on that service and the saving is passed onto everyone else, then great. Effectively it would act as a trickle-down.

So in short, I don't like it, but I can be bribed.

As you point out though, in critical, life or death situations, I don't think it's applicable.

[TooNice]

Since you apparently don't have a problem with the idea of being able to pay for priority access to government services, do you have any thoughts as to where the line should be drawn? Would you be O.K. with people being able to pay extra for a faster ambulance service if they're having a heart attack? Because IMO it's the thin end of the wedge.

I think that I would draw the line at emergency services. There might be the odd exceptions on compassionate ground, but generally speaking, 3 minutes or 3 hours of queueing is more a question comfort than a life affecting situation.

One should certainly ask why the queue are 3 hours long in the first place, but if it is a case where resources are being diverted to serve those paying £1800, then I would say that there is a misuse of resources: It doesn't take a lot of £1800 to pay for itself, and even add to the pot. Without this optional service, we'd just have a longer queue. The "plebs" as you put it, would be waiting just as much if not a little longer. I do have a problem when people are thinking more about dragging others down (especially when they are paying handsomely for it) when the cause of inefficient service is likely somewhere else altogether. As to why charging £10 to jump queues might not work very well, if everyone can easily pay for it and are paying for it, then all the priority queues will turn into a regular queue. For the service to be of any real value, it needs to be expensive enough that 80-90% of passengers are not willing to pay for it.

Another thing I'll note is that First/Business class passengers generally disembark first anyway, and as long as they are not dragging on their feet, they are likely to beat all the other passengers on the same flight to the immigration. Granted, they may be able to jump ahead of passengers from a prior flight, but I'd consider that a very limited privilege for the price.

I looked up the service (http://www.heathrowbyinvitation.com/index.php/faqs). Oddly enough, the premium cabin requirement is only with BA. Another thing I noticed is that the service must be booked 24 hours ahead, so even if there are hardly any queues (as was the case in my last few trips), they'd still have to pay for it. Granted, they are getting more than just queue jumping, but this suggests to me that it's part of providing a premium service.

For what it's worth, Lufthansa has a dedicated first class terminal with it's own immigration / security service. You can bet that those going through there will, as a side effect, go through immigration and security faster than those on the main terminal. As long as the cost of running such service is profitable (and therefore contribute to the pot that is then re-invested for all), it could be a win-win arrangement.

[Saracen]

....
I do, however, expect the government to treat all of its subjects equally and dispassionately. That has clearly not been the case. I think I've a right to object to that, and I'd call it 'egalitarianism'.

Looking forward to your objections.

Not been online for a few days, and not got long now, so this'll be quick.

Re: Fastrak, as far as I'm aware, the government do treat everyone equally at Fastrak. I'm not aware of it taking any less time for the border control guy at Fastrak to inspect my documents than it does for anyone else, in the main queue. There's just a lot less people in the queue (often, nobody) and that is a function of the way the airport operator operates.

I'd also point out that my comments were not about what should happen, from government or anyone else, but about what does. And it's all about the amount of two currencies you have - one is money, and the other, power. And often, they amount to the same thing.

Right or wrong, it's the way of the world, and moaning about it is about as productive a use of time as farting into the face of a hurricane.

I'd also point out I have not defended the service that prompted this thread. I simply pointed out that the "principle" applies all over the place, that being that money buys access and privilege. Whether it should or not is, in the scheme of things, irrelevant, because it does, and it isn't going to change any time soon. Even the likes of Lenin and Marx didn't manage to change it. They simply changed the currency from money and heredity aristocracy to party position and hierarchy. Orwell said it .... "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."