Improving our security
Improving our security
Our new £45 million security area in South Terminal has 19 new security lanes, in a single location, creating more space and using the latest technology to help improve your experience at the airport.
We offer different options for our passengers - assistance lanes for passengers with reduced mobility or families with young children who need extra help or premium lanes for busy business and first class travellers.
We spent a lot of time on the design of the security area with input from both our staff and passengers, bringing together best practice technologies from around the world.
Before security, you'll find a spacious area for preparation with information in different languages. All the new lanes have automated electronic 'pass gates'. Simply place your boarding card or smartphone barcode on to the automatic readers to get through the gates and start your journey. We obviously have staff on hand to help and wider assisted access gates for those who need them.
The main security areas has colour coded zones with information showing queue times for the individual security lanes to help you choose which is quickest.
Our security search processes, governed by the DfT, ensure the safety and security of all our passengers. It's a serious business, but that's not to say we can't deliver great customer service at the same time. Right now, all our security officers are working towards a City & Guilds Level 2 accredited certificate in customer service. So far, 95.8% of them have completed the training with a 95.9% pass rate (compared to UK average of 78%).
In 2011, it took on average just 1 minute 32 seconds to pass through security and over 96% of the time passengers got through in under five minutes. Our new security areas will help us deliver a safe, speedy passenger focused service to help all our guests start their journey.
