Heathrow connection times

I'm planning a trip to the US end of July and am having a hard time finding flights with long enough connection times through Heathrow.

Anyone who has flown from US to UK recently that can tell me what your connection time was? I'm expecting Heathrow to be a mess (nothing unusual, just worse with covid). Best connection I can find from Chicago to London is 1 hour 55 minutes! That's absolutely ridiculous to me but wanted feedback from recent travellers.

TIA!

My mum flew back to the US a month-ish ago. They changed her flight from Manchester about four times. No connections worked after the changes.

All flights leave to the US earlier in the day (because of time changes, etc…). So you need a stupid early flight in order to connect.

Mostly it’s easiest to go down the day/ night before… This is especially true while there aren’t any flights to the US from other UK airports at the moment (none fromManchester, for example).


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Is flying out of Scotland an option? We always had very good luck with flying out of either Edinburgh or Glasgow Airports. Nowhere near the crowds of Heathrow.  We flew Iceland Air a few times, and Aer Lingus (which puts you on a puddle jumper to Dublin to catch the transatlantic flight - watch the size of carryons!) was fine, too.  We went well out of our way to avoid going through Heathrow just for that reason - the mass of people and the time constraints.

(And the fact that every time the Daughter went through there there was one hassle or another for her by the security people/TSA equivalents. One time she had to make a  relatively tight connector to Glasgow and they pulled her out of the line because their sniffer had alerted to explosives. They were not very nice to her at all - she was in a wheelchair at the time, and they were very bullying. The airport helper who was wheeling her tried several times to intervene, asking them to remember proper manners/procedures. Didn't help. So after a West-Coast USA to London all-night flight, they gave her static about carrying explosives. Turned out to be her knitting yarn was setting it off. They they gave her a ration of BS about where had that yarn been.... Like at the yarn store, dude?)

Book what you can find. It’s a crap shoot honestly!

Last couple of weeks when we had the sunny weather I noticed ONE plane on it’s decent into Heathrow. I’m only on the flight path depending on time of day and winds. But precovid and a day in the garden, planes are CONSTANT.

Flights ARE happening but shuffled around a LOT.  I would book what you can and then panic when you are at the airport.

I’ve missed MANY MANY planes in my years. They always just put you on the next one.  Not ideal but depending on the day, Heathrow is about 30 minutes from me so if you have a long nasty layover, I’m happy to meet up and help kill the time. Would mean clearing security again and listening to me yap like an excited puppy! 

We flew LHR-EWR + EWR-SFO and SFO-ORD + ORD-LHR on United last month. Departing Heathrow isn’t bad, but needed extra time for US immigration to check my UKC husband’s eligibility to enter (needed physical marriage certificate and my US passport - but docs proving parenthood of USC under 18). Other than that, flights to the States are wonderfully empty since most UK citizens are banned from entry to the US with Trump’s travel ban - for now, anyway.

But I see you’re in Scotland and I guess you’re wondering about connecting in Heathrow, catching a flight to Scotland? I haven’t done that before—where do you go through immigration?

The queues in Heathrow for arrivals at immigration were fairly long (we couldn’t use the e-gates since we have a kid), but nowhere near the mess I’ve seen portrayed in the media. Maybe it’s luck of the draw? Maybe they improved by the time we traveled?

Thanks for all the info everyone! I've discovered this morning that my arrival from Chicago and departure from Heathrow to Aberdeen is all in Terminal 5 so that's a huge relief. Even if something happens, I'm able to get booked on a later flight home to Aberdeen.

I'm hoping for as close to empty flights as possible. Even without covid around, I hate having people sit next to me 

We travelled recently and had a 2 hour layover. You go through Border Control at Heathrow but there's a separate (shorter) area for UK connections so keep an eye out for it on your arrival. The longest part of the journey was the train to our further out gates. We had plenty of time, however. Grabbed a snack for breakfast, toilet breaks etc and got onto our flight with loads of time.

Was painless.

Keep in mind, you go back through security. So all drinks and duty free you get from Chicago will not be allowed to go through I don't think.