Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

Now, I am reporting today on the Heathrow UK Border Force Officers Strike.

300 people stopping work, but I'm actually not at Heathrow because they politely declined my

requests to go and report from the airport so instead I'm at Paddington Station and I've

been talking to people getting off the Heathrow Express which comes in here and I've taken a sample so far of five people

they've come in from various destinations uh Dubai Hong Kong Boston Philadelphia and Dallas Fort Worth

and universally all of them are saying, we didn't have any problem.

I've just spoken to Angie from Boston.

Kind of ridiculously easy, she said.

There were just no people there.

I put my passport in.

It scanned my face.

It beeped.

And I was through.

So no issues for her.

Other people have said, yeah, super fast was the guy who just

coming from Dallas Fort Worth, which is good news, given that there were huge problems,

actually specifically at Edinburgh Airport, but also a number of other airports with the E-Gates. This was last Thursday.

Massive problems. People waiting nearly two hours at Edinburgh Airport. I heard some cases there.

And so it's remarkable that everything seems to have been speeded up. The E-Gates are working.

Now, of course, it's fair to say that I don't know

and there's no way of me knowing that there aren't 200 people waiting in a very long line at Terminal 4

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