Routes and Airports Channel

Thirteen months later, BA touts success of T5

By Sandra Arnoult
ATW's Airports Today, May, 2009, p.3

A little more than a year after the highly touted opening of London Heathrow's Terminal 5 turned into a nightmare for British Airways passengers and a public relations disaster for the airline and BAA, the facility is more than living up to its original promise, say BA officials.

"T5 has made things less complex. Our punctuality has improved--we've beaten our own target," BA Head of Network Operations Peter Lynam told ATW's Airports Today in London in late April. Some 55% of the estimated 255 daily flights out of T5 are able to leave slightly ahead of scheduled departure time, he said. Around 24.5 million passengers have used T5 since it opened.

The complex includes the main terminal A along with satellite buildings B and C, which will be connected by an underground track transit system. The first two facilities currently are operating while satellite C is expected to be operational in May 2010. Both B and C are designed to accommodate the A380, 12 of which have been ordered by BA.

The terminal also enabled the carrier to consolidate some of its crew-related operations. Previously, crews checked in for flights at the Compass Center, located across the runway from T5. They would pass through security at the center and board a bus that was sealed for security purposes. The bus would carry them around the airport perimeter to the appropriate terminal but it frequently would get stuck in traffic, making them late for flights, Lynam explained. T5 has an expansive dedicated check-in area where BA crews can clear security and check their bags before reporting--ontime or before scheduled departures--for their assigned flights.

The inauguration of T5 on March 27, 2008, was meant to showcase the sophisticated computer-controlled baggage system of the £4.3 billion ($8.6 billion) terminal but it quickly broke down, leading to more than 300 flight cancellations and a backlog of some 28,000 stranded bags over the next week. Poor staff training and logistics also were issues.

Lynam said no single-point failure caused the problems, which cost BA more than £16 million and led to the sacking of two senior executives. But he primarily faulted the baggage system, which he said had been tested for 18 months but apparently not in a true real-world situation. "It had been tested, but once it was exposed to a live data it couldn't read, it took about two weeks to solve the major problem," he said, adding, "We continue to tweak it."

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