Only five months for an ILR application? Hopelessly optimistic, based on my 40 years of working for this lot.

As for the airport controls, when I worked at Heathrow, we had a colour chart - at times when most flights were expected, most staff were scheduled. It's not hard to do - the arrivals pattern was reasonably constant during the week, and the vast majority of flights turned up when they were expected to. However, I gather that nowadays, that system has been abolished, and staffing patterns are now rigid, and no longer geared to the work.

I'm glad I'm out of it all....