After the Queen officially opened Terminal 5 at
London's Heathrow Airport on 15th March 2008, the opening day for business on 28th March had been long awaited and eagerly anticipated, not just by BA but by their loyal customers.
The new terminal, to be used exclusively by British Airways cost £4.2 billion and is designed to handle over 30 million passengers a year. The baggage handling system, the largest in Europe is able to manage 12,000 bags an hour.
Unfortunately our national day of pride and celebration turned out to be a disaster. In a personal apology to his staff and to BA customers, Willie Walsh, CEO of
British Airways said that the opening day at Terminal 5 "was definitely not their finest hour". Despite numerous training days and practice runs, it appears the training and staff familiarisation had been woefully inadequate.
Several problems seem to have contributed to the chaos although the main finger of blame is pointed at the state of the art baggage handling system which didn't work properly, staff and baggage handlers being late for work owing to terminal familiarisation issues, and security problems which British Airways blames on
BAA. All these problems combined brought the new terminal to its knees before it really got started.
BAA who manage Terminal 5 also own and operate the new baggage handling system and are responsible for Airport security. British Airways has complained to BAA that there wasn't enough staff on duty on the morning of 28th March to process the BA baggage handlers through airport security which together with the baggage handling system breakdown resulted in a back log of over 15,000 bags
On another related security issue, BAA had decided earlier in the week to abandon their idea of finger printing every passenger that passed through Terminal 5 as they had been warned that by doing so they may breach data protection laws. As an alternative, BAA are now going to use a system which most other International airports use whereby passengers will be digitally photographed to confirm that passengers at the gate are the same as those who were at check-in.
Speaking on
BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on Friday 28th March, aviation expert Jaime Bowden compared Terminal 5's disastrous start with that of Denver, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong Airports. He said that while these airports are now considered to be good, it took Denver Airport over a year to sort their problems out.
Here's hoping that BA and BAA work things out soon and Terminal 5 despite it's regrettable start becomes a symbol of national pride.
Biography
Author: Sydney Cauldon-Low
Sydney is a retired businessman having spent many of his working years visiting
uk conference venues using
free venue finding services such as
Vibrant Venues.
