London Heathrow airport has launched a six-month trial allowing travellers to pre-book a timed slot to go through security and avoid long queues.
The Heathrow Timeslot trial will be held at Terminal 3 and will be available to passengers travelling with American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Emirates and Virgin Atlantic. Although more carriers may be added during the six-month period.
The service will be free and participating passengers will receive a designated time and entry point to the security search area.
Heathrow said that the findings from the trial will “inform any future roll-out of the service across the airport”.
Mark Powell, operational planning director at Heathrow, added: “We’re constantly thinking of innovative ways to boost the safety and streamline the experience for our passengers.
“This new trial will give passengers that extra added bit of certainty and reassurance ahead of their journey. We look forward to seeing the data come in to give us some learnings on how we can roll this out more widely across Heathrow.”
The service will be accessed through a dedicated online booking page and passengers travelling with eligible airlines can book up to three days before their departure date. The latest timeslots for security will be available 90 minutes before departure for long-haul flights and 60 minutes before short-haul flights.
Passengers do not have to register for the service and only need to provide an email address and flight details. Once they have booked a slot, travellers will be sent a QR code and on arrival at the airport they can follow the signs to the Heathrow Timeslot area after checking in any baggage.