Heathrow Terminal 5
How sad it is for the travelling public, the aviation industry in
general and BAA and BA in particular that Heathrow's new T5 continues to
be a PR nightmare and operational debacle. You would have thought that all systems had been tested to the limit and fully operational with the bugs
ironed out before the terminal opened.
According to an industry newsletter I read, things are so bad that BA doesn't know how many bags have been misplaced - at one stage they said 15,000 but more than 25,000 may have been delayed. No one really knows when passengers and bags will be reunited and some industry sources are suggesting weeks.
Apparently, BA is even sending bags in bulk to Italy where a private company is sorting them and then driving them to their owners across Europe.
So much for the so-called 'world class' baggage system that was claimed would 'work perfectly on day one'.
But the problems don't end there with many flights still being cancelled and other systems breaking down. On one day last week, with thousands of frustrated passengers trying to find out what was happening, BA only had 2 of 26 customer service (?) booths open.
And one of the weak excuses offered for this disaster was that both the airport's and BA's employees couldn't find their way to the new staff carparking at the airport, meaning that people were reporting for duty up to two hours late. Unelievable, if true !!
So much for BA's earlier boasts about how smoothly their move to the new
terminal would be, and how well they had tested everything prior to
the start of service there.
Compare this debacle to the apparently smooth and glitch free
operations of Changi's new terminal three and Beijing's massive new
airport.
Has anyone heard any different ?
What did they do right that Heathrow didn't ?
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