UK extends 'Registered Traveller' fast-track airport service

Again from the Registered Traveller website:

It costs £50 to apply. This charge is non-refundable, even if your application is unsuccessful.

There was a rule of 4 visits in the past 52 weeks, as the definition for frequency. But it does not seem to be published anymore. What I'm curious to know is if you can apply again if you failed the first time round? Or is it better to wait till you have met that 4/52 threshold? GBP 50 is immaterial. But if you only get one chance then you don't want to mess it up! I wish they were clearer!  

At least after April 8, you get most of it back if you aren't successful. If it's a minimum of 4 trips a year to the UK then unlikely I can take advantage. My travel to the UK is nowhere so regular as 4 trips every year.

Michael - just use the regular lane. When I landed in LHR last year it was shorter than the EU/UK lanes.

Line length isn't an indicator of how long it will take, considering the EU lines they are only for the most part checking your identity, not checking and questioning why you are entering the UK. So in otherwords it always move faster.

As for the queue in London, depends upon many things. Which terminal, what time of day and even what time of year. The worst lines are always the few weeks before uni starts for the year with many student travellers who take for ever to get processed.

I've always found the best terminal to be T3 as it has a good mix of long and short haul (with short haul seemingly having more European travellers than long), and T3 the worst owing to mostly long haul flights.

Oops, meant best terminal T5, worst T3.

Yes they do.

Depedning upon terminal and time of day not always open. My last arrival at T3 in August last year, which was around 7pm on a Saturday it was closed.

When I lived in the UK and used T5 regularly (so going back 4-5 years now), the express line was only generally open in the morning and if I recall for a burst of long haul arrivals in the early evening. Of course the UK border has changed quite a lot since then.

Got to be seen to be doing something about nothing afterall. What I mean by the is the UK's 'major' immigration problem is European, which they cannot stop, but to appease the masses they crack down on everyone else, which was never the issue to start with. But works wonders for local consumption and doesn't stop the genuine travllers from coming. But I digress.

Interesting point to digress on. It is absolutely ironic that Europeans who can't speak a word of English, share no common culture and traditions and for all intent and purposes foreign are able to waltz into the UK, while the likes of Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Barbadians, Jamaicans and countless others whose Head of State is Her Majesty has to use the foreign channel. It really does reveal the horrors and scars of the first and second world wars on the psyche of past leaders on the Continent such that they contort themselves into an untenable state of affairs, most recently with this Eurozone debacle, to preserve peace in Europe.