Flying out of London Heathrow Terminal 4 yesterday, my first visit to this outlying home for British Airways and assorted others, brought it home how much the carriers that are left in this terminal and terminals 1,2 and 3 will be at a disadvantage when BA moves to the glittering new Terminal 5.
Terminal 4 is horrible. The interior is dark and grim, the check-in zone is narrow and cramped, the boarding and shopping areas are dense and crowded.
Now I'm unlikely to be telling anyone who uses Terminal 4 anything new here. But Air France-KLM and fellow SkyTeam carriers I pity you greatly if you do indeed take up residence in this terminal.
I resolve to ask a lot more questions in 2007 about how BAA proposes to invest in Terminal 4 to bring it up to something at least approaching Terminal 5 standards. I am sure SkyTeam and Air France-KLM have been asking them for ages - I wonder what answer they are getting?
One quesiton I know they will be unlikely to find a positive answer to is whether or not they will obtain lower terminal fees at Terminal 4 compared to BA's at Terminal 5? Terminal 4 will be so sub-standard compared to Terminal 5 it will be almost immoral not to charge less. Or BA should be charged more for the pleasure of using Terminal 5?
BA, on the other hand, is delighted it will be vacating Terminal 4. In fact, the countdown is well under 500 days to go to the big move to Terminal 5. As BA says in its inflight magazine: "The move will transform the flying experience for the 30 million BA passengers who pass through Heathrow airport each year."
I hope to be among them, as I aim never to set foot in Terminal 4 again (well except that is upon my return there this evening!)
Please don't make me use Heathrow Terminal 4 again
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on December 12, 2006 6:33 PM | Reply
There is much not to like about Terminal 4, and just having used the terminal last week, I will agree that I would not like to use it again. The really bad part of the terminal is its geography. It is located to the south of the southern runway which means that long taxi times are required to reach the northern runway for takeoff and, upon landing on the northern runway, long taxi times are required to access the terminal. There also seems to be a shortage of gates and ground equipment and ground staff. Our inbound flight (which landed on the northern runway) finally parked at a stand very far removed from the terminal itself. We had to wait 1/2 hour for a qualified staff member to push the air stairs up to the airplane. Our outbound flight a week later was delayed for over an hour waiting for a pushback tug. This situation seems to be quite common at T4 and BA seem unable to fix the problem. Moving to T5 may ease the gate situation and the long taxi times, but if BA is serious about pleasing customers they may wish to address the shortage of ground staff and equipment.
Bigboy
on December 18, 2006 2:08 PM | Reply
None of the terminals at LHR are particularly good. They're a hotch-potch of development over the years, trying to extend them to handle even more aircraft and passengers. I don't think T4 is particularly bad - in fact it used to be quite pleasant around 10 years ago when only BA longhaul and KLM were operating from it. It's just too full now, and BAA have tried to cram in too many retail outlets.
The biggest problem in T4 is the sheer size of the BA operation. Even the Club World check-in queues now stretch a long way into the terminal, and the World Traveller queues are epic. That just gives a bad impression as you walk into the terminal (and thank god for nice coloured bits of BA plastic.....)
Henk Ombelet