• Cancelled flights and baggage delays have blighted the opening day of Heathrow's new £4.3bn Terminal 5. British
• Airways, which uses the terminal, was also forced to cancel 20 flights by 1300 GMT due to "teething problems" encountered in the morning.
• Some waited two hours for luggage from a Frankfurt flight that landed at around 0830 GMT.
• Heather, 36, told the BBC: "Apparently the computer software told the baggage people that the flight had taken off.
• There were also complaints from passengers about confusing road signs, problems when paying at a car park, and broken down escalator

See more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314816.stm

This is just so typical of England isnt it, it will be interesting to see how long these "teething" problems last for!!

BAA, as we know, is owned by the Spanish company Ferrovial, let's blame the Spaniards

I love this statement on the BAA website "Terminal 5 has been designed to help save you time."  

Our sympathies go to anyone who is currently caught up in this national embarrasment.... and hasn't yet learnt, don't fly BA !!!

 

Perhaps they will build another terminal for the A380 just to handle the baggage off these monsters.  I travelled the inaugaral to Singaporte and what a dramatic difference.  From the aircraft door through immigration and collect suitcase and in to taxi, 18 MINUTES !  Return flight 45 minutes just to retrieve suitcase, each flight can only be allocated one belt and it was a right scrum.  Visitors to Britain be warned.

 It is definately something that will need to be considered down the line isn't it (excuse the pun).

I can't believe that they are only letting people on with hand luggage; it really is a silly situation regardless it being such a new terminal! 

Typical for the UK, it’s too complicated, too many people and departments involved too much bureaucracy, health & safety gone mad, it is almost impossible these days in the UK to pull off such a large project without major hiccups and setbacks. How come when they moved Kai Tak in 1998 to the new Chek Lap Kok there was no delays and a smooth transition…….

Looks like the chaos is set to continue this weekend. 54 flights cancelled for tomorrow already.

It's an absolute joke.

Well, I've been watching the T5 project for some years now, and it was with great pride and joy that I finally watched the Official opening by Her Majesty. Finally, I thought, here we have a massive complex project to show the World, built on time AND on budget..... Vivid memories still remain of the Wembley Stadium debucle. Then on Monday night, I watched a Channel 5 documentry covering T5, and one segment of this concentrated on this new underground baggage system. They had been ...... testing, testing to virtually the point of destruction, even to the point of loading the system with 12,000 items of baggage... We were convinced that this was one project that just could not go wrong. So, in reality what has gone wrong.? Firstly BA stated that it was all due to teething troubles and staff unfamiliarity....... but in reality, how can this be with so much time and energy going into the pre launch? Well, whats next on the agenda............? Ah yes - THE OLYMPICS...!! (already, as I understand it, 1 BILLION over budget because they forgot about the VAT ???) My Flabber has never been so gasted. John.

I know what you mean Johnny, it is just incredulous that with so much preperation time things could go so wrong so quickly. Goodness knows how we are going to do with the Olympics

Yet another day for T5

At least 15,000 bags are at Heathrow Airport after a fourth day of cancellations at the new Terminal 5. One-fifth of British Airways flights from the terminal are to be scrapped again today - 54 out of the 330 scheduled, with many flights still not carrying the passenger's luggage.

BA has said that an estimated 15,000 bags are stuck at the airport with their owners elsewhere, with one source has told the BBC that the number may be closer to 20,000. The airline said bags for UK destinations would be returned by courier while international luggage would take the next available flight, although ground-based options were also being considered.

 

Methinks that a diet of humble pie will be on the menu for the forseeable future for all concerned in this humiliating debacle.  Even JFK looks tolerable after this!

More trouble for Heathrow Terminal 5

The problems at Heathrow's Terminal Five took a fresh turn yesterday, after sensitive security blueprints were handed to the Sunday Mirror. Police immediately launched an investigation into how the detailed plans of the problem-hit terminal's fire alarm system went missing and landed at the newspaper.

According to a Mirror expert, the documents could enable someone with the right knowledge to shut down the building's fire alarms or even plunge the terminal into darkness. The documents contain four large technical drawings detailing circuitry and other workings of the fire alarm system, including the location of smoke alarms and emergency lighting. It also includes a series of spreadsheets and checklists, with dates and times of faults with the technology.

A reader contacted the Sunday Mirror saying he had found the documents in a gutter in Croydon, South London. Aviation security analyst Christopher Yates said: ‘With that blueprint a trained person could take out the fire and safety system.’ He added that if the documents fell into terrorists' hands it could aid them in ‘left-of-field acts against aviation’.

A spokeswoman for BAA told the newspaper: ‘We are confident that these documents pose no risk to either safety or security at the terminal.’

Source http://www.uk-airport-news.info/heathrow-airport-news-310308c.htm 

 

A friend of mine flew out to the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg yesterday and sent me this text message - Turns out the whetherspoons in terminal five does a bloody good pint of deuchars tis such a shame i've got two hours to kill before my flight!

Unfortunately he completely neglected to mention any delays or luggage problems so depending upon your point of view he's either got his priorities completely right or completely wrong. 

I read about a classic game in the Metro this morning, called "Wee Willie Walsh". Basically you play Willie and the aim is to load luggage onto the plane. It's an addictive game so give it a go:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=131554&in_page_id=34 

BTW Batfink, i think your friend has got his priorities just right

Here's the game - enjoy

What did happen to "Tiger" Naomi at T5 today ?

Poor old Naomi, taking two bags onto the aircraft rather than one caused all kinds of problems:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7329817.stm 

Terminal 5 losses top £16m

British Airways has said that the chaos surrounding the opening of Terminal 5 has so far cost about £16m.

The costs were incurred mainly by the cancellation of 300 short-haul flights, the firm said. "Although there remains a small number of cancellations for today and tomorrow, the Terminal 5 performance is steadily improving," BA said.

Earlier the airline had promised that a full schedule of flights would operate on Saturday. It will be the first day of normal operation for the terminal, which has been hit by serious problems with baggage handling.Earlier this week, analysts at Deutsche Bank forecast the problems at Terminal 5 would persist into the summer and cost the airline about £150m in total. On 30 April, BA plans to move long-haul flights to the new terminal.

Long-term damage?

There is concern about how the chaos at Terminal 5 will damage BA's reputation. Passengers are likely to get greater choice in the future, particularly on transatlantic routes, following an agreement between the US and the European Union to open up travel. Those routes have been crucial in maintaining BA's profitability. As it outlined the cost of the Terminal 5 disruption, BA also announced that its passenger traffic was down 2.8% in March from the same month last year.

The load factor - which denotes the number of seats sold as a proportion of total seats - fell to 75.4% from 76.3% in March 2007

Source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7328838.stm

BA is going to delay the long haul move to Terminal 5 to at least June. I guess this is kind of expected after all the mess but so disappointing after all the hype:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7342263.stm

I flew from T5 two days after it opened on a short haul Flight with checked-in luggage.  I had a short wait for my luggage on the way back in, but nothing compared to the usual Heathrow chaos.

 

After leaving plenty of time in anticipation of a problem, I turned up at the airport three hours before my flight.  It only took me 5 minutes to get through the fast bag drop and security so I had almost 3 hours to do nothing but eat and drink.

 

And despite having such a good experience in T5, I received an apology email from BA admitting that they were having operational problems.

 

Very sensible i think, BA cannot afford anymore issues with T5...this should give them plenty of time to sort things out and complete training 

More on this http://www.britishairways.com/travel/terminalmoves/public/en_gb

It seems that Two execs have got the chop because of it all the malarky, apparently for not being able to explain what was going wrong on the first day:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7348401.stm

To be fair they probably had no idea what was happening, like the rest of us!

 

Batfink:

A friend of mine flew out to the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg yesterday and sent me this text message - Turns out the whetherspoons in terminal five does a bloody good pint of deuchars tis such a shame i've got two hours to kill before my flight!

Unfortunately he completely neglected to mention any delays or luggage problems so depending upon your point of view he's either got his priorities completely right or completely wrong. 

 

 

The same friend who sent me the above text message has just returned from a conference in Florida and sent me this email at 7am under the heading "Terminal Five sucks" -

Most efficient baggage system ever my a*se!!  Been waiting for 40 minutes and not a single ****ing bag, surely they can't lose an entire flights baggage??

Would that get them into the guinness book of world records??
 

It comes as no surprise i guess, but it has taken a House of Commons Transport Committee  months to judge that the T-5 opening was a "national embarrassment".

 It criticised poor staff training, not enough system testing and a lack of communication between BA and BAA.

I think i could have made that judgement at the time!!!

Yes, it was obviously a great "natioal embarrassment" without a doubt. But who actually handles the baggage at Terminal 5? Is it BA, BAA or a contractor who is keeping very quiet. I've always thought baggage, catering, security and various other services were all out sourced to contract. Could be totally wrong of course.. John.