... and now they’re bringing in FedEx to help sort out the crisis. That’s the word from the new $8.6 billion Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow, which opened amid great fanfare (including the Queen) which has been nothing short of a nightmare since. Interestingly, the PR folks handling the T-5 opening have been hawking the media for coverage for several months. Haven’t heard a word from them since the opening.
It’s also interesting that a search of press releases of BAA, the airport operator of Heathrow, reveals nothing about the debacle. Not a mention. British Airways, the airline which is attempting to operate out of T-5, has "We’re Sorry" pasted on its home page. That’s a start.
According to British Airways, “We are operating the vast majority of flights to and from Heathrow Terminal 5. We continue to work towards increasing the number of flights we operate in the days ahead and plan to fly 92 per cent of our flying programme to and from Terminal 5 by Thursday 3 April.†It’s reported that thousands of bags are being shipped to Milan for sorting.
According to www.airport-technology.com, the T-5 baggage system is the largest in Europe for a single terminal, which it says was designed by an integrated team from BAA, BA, and Vanderlande Industries of the Netherlands. It is intended to process 70,000 bags a day.
Opening a new airport or terminal is of course a significant undertaking. There’s a book in there somewhere. It took the new Denver International nearly an additional year and a half to open in the mid-90s, again due to a high-tech baggage system that never did work and is now being dismantled. At Austin-Bergstrom International, officials first opened the airport to cargo operations to get the airfield bugs out before opening it to passenger service – probably a good idea. Yet, they did the same thing at the new Hong Kong airport and it still had issues upon fully opening.
There are lessons to be learned from the T-5 experience. We just have to find out what they are first.
Thanks for reading. jfi