Passengers flying from London Heathrow to Dallas – Fort Worth on American Airlines flight 51 and taking a connecting flight no longer walk to immigration, pick up their bags at customs, drop them back off to re-check them, and go through security again.

• Instead, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will set up immigration for them at the gate.

• Passengers will clear right there and walk straight into the terminal without going through security. They were cleared by security in London and that’s considered sufficient now.

• Checked bags will be transferred to the passenger’s connecting flight for them.

This started Thursday, and the test is expected to expand to additional flights, make things far better for passengers, and “cut connection time by more than half.”

While passport control is set up gateside for this flight, it’s only for connecting passengers and not for anyone actually ending their journey in Dallas. Here’s the internal memo from American Airlines explaining this process.

Back in January, passengers traveling on eastbound flights from Atlanta and Dallas connecting in London were able to skip security at their connection and proceed directly into terminal 3 or 5, heading to the lounge or gate for their next flight.

This actually makes London Heathrow more desirable as a connecting airport, even having to bus between terminals. My record there is three buses and 95 minutes though I’ve also had to do two buses and a train between connecting flights (and, in each case, still having to clear passport control and security).

It’s great to see an expansion of ‘One Stop Security’ to westbound flights from London to the U.S. Historically, for the most part, U.S. airlines aren’t well set up to segregate international and domestic passengers – they usually co-mingle in the same terminals, and arriving international passengers could just exit the airport into the U.S. if they weren’t forced to go through customs and immigration immediately.

Setting up gateside immigration, and transferring bags, is an interesting solution. We’ll see how well this scales, but I look forward to trying it on my next London – Dallas flight. It’s almost enough to make me want to hop on the 8:30 a.m. departure from Heathrow instead of one of American’s four later flights to Dallas.

Meanwhile, American was also the first to trial international remote baggage screening for its Sydney to Los Angeles flight starting back in April, where passengers on that service connecting beyond Los Angeles don’t have to pick up their bags at customs and walk them through to re-check them.

Those passengers do have to clear immigration and go back through security, however, as ‘IRBS’ is not part of the ‘One Stop Security’ program. London – Dallas is, indeed, the first westbound flight that’s part of that program.