Heathrow Terminal Five has was been touted as relief for baggage nightmares. However, the queues at check-in could not have gone much worse when it opened to the public yesterday, 27th March 2008!
According to Willie Walsh, British Airways CEO, Heathrow T5 is one of the ‘most breathtaking man-made spaces in modern Britain’. Well, that may be so Willie but if we can’t get our bags out, then we don’t really care.
This article, written by a good friend of mine, on Heathrow T5 (before the troubled launch!) could almost have been published in Private Eye 
With a projected 30 million customers a year and 70,000 baggage items passing through each day, it was vital for T5 to have the necessary supportive infrastructure. Most importantly an innovative end-to-end baggage-handling solution, able to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Although it might be a huge pain.. The point is, if you do have travel insurance, you probably have cover for both delay and loss of baggage!
Update: Now in it’s 5th day Heathrow T5 have reportedly have 28,000 bags that they have to manually process.
This is priceless:
It has also emerged that the Olympic torch, due to arrive at T5 on Saturday, will now arrive at a VIP suite instead.
4 comments ↓
not the start Heathrow was looking for. it doesn’t appear to be reducing delays, more creating them
Gethen, you’re deadright - but…on a plus point (and a past labour theme tune?) things can only get better… I know some things about launching new systems and I know that they rarely go smoothly!
If it’s still a problem in 2 months, let me know and we’ll make a fuss…
Sticky launch…
This is just bullshit - another case of winding the system up!
I’m not sure I see your point Roger… Although with another 54 flights grounded today and a backlog of 15,000 bags to clear - I hope none of them yours! - this is not the launch they were hoping for!
Leave a Comment