Olympic VIPs to get exclusive passport lanes at Heathrow – London Olympics 2012
It has recently been revealed that the VIPs who will be attending the London 2012 Olympic Games will be allotted exclusive lanes at the Heathrow airport.
This step has been taken in order to make it easier to enter England for a total of 25,000 athletes who will be accompanied by their delegations consisting of coaches as well as officials. This was made public by the UK Border Agency.
This procedure is going to be helpful to the visiting athletes and their delegations as they will not be stuck in the jam that is present at the airport. However, the provision of this special facility for the Olympic athletes and their delegations is going
to make the life of the rest of the commuters at the airport fairly difficult. This is because the provision of exclusive passport lanes is going to increase the congestion on the other passport lanes that will be made available to regular travellers.
A spokesperson for the UK Border Agency said, “We have plans in place to make Games Family Members’ arrivals at Heathrow as quick and simple as possible. We expect most visa nationals will already have provided their biometric information prior to Games
time and there will be dedicated Olympic lanes at Heathrow to speed up the process where we need to collect the biometric information of those who haven’t. We are working closely with our partners, including BAA, to help deliver a safe and secure London 2012
Games.”
The delay that will take place at the time of the Olympics may well be more than a couple of hours as presently, the non-EU travellers have to wait for two hours at Terminal 4 in the peak hours.
The Olympic Games are heading towards London for the third time in the city’s history. After having staged the Games for the third time, the capital of England will become the first city in the world to have hosted the Olympic Games for a total of three
times. The first Olympics in London took place in 1908 while the second ones took place in 1948.
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