Ind/Simon Calder: Terminal 5 is a breathtaking display ofinstitutional hubris

Simon Calder: Terminal 5 is a breathtaking display of institutional hubris

BA's botched Terminal 5 opening is sadly typical of Britain's transport
system

The Independent
Saturday, 29 March 2008

The destinations may have been different * Norway and South Africa rather
than Norfolk and Suffolk - but the breathtakingly botched opening of
Heathrow Terminal 5 was the week's second example of corporate complacency
in the face of transport meltdown.

On Tuesday, the over-running engineering works that have lately become a
bank holiday tradition brought rail gridlock to East Anglia. By Thursday,
the "T5" debacle had redefined institutional hubris. At the end of a
humiliating week, a nation that has historically produced some outstanding
travellers is now synonymous with inertia, not mobility.

"Inquire airline" proved the most popular destination on the departures
boards at Terminal 5 yesterday afternoon. The only airline, of course, is
British Airways, which deployed the vague phrase in preference to the more
accurate "your BA flight's been cancelled, pal, and you're going nowhere".
Yet until the first passengers had the temerity to turn up and expect to be
transported along with their luggage to their chosen destination, there had
been nothing imprecise in the claims about the T5 experience * and, in
particular, the world's most expensive baggage system: "Extensive and
repeated testing of the system by BA has taken place for six months,"
trilled the publicity, "to make sure it is in full operation readiness when
T5 opens for business."

Operationally, Terminal 5 has not proved much more disastrous than the
pre-Olympic fiasco of Athens (where Olympic Airways boarding passes referred
passengers to gates at the old airport) and the travails of Bangkok's
airport (parts of which have been sinking into the mud east of the Thai
capital). The difference is: the unqualified assurances by BA's boss to
prospective travellers.

When Stelios Haji-Ioannou started easyJet in 1995, his policy was simple:
"Under-promise and over-deliver." All he offered was a flight from London to
Glasgow for £29; if you got a smile and an on-time arrival, so much the
better. British Airways and its Spanish-owned landlord, BAA, have turned
that maxim on its head. They promised the best aviation experience since the
Wright Brothers, and got it dismally wrong.

The failure to provide thousands of travellers with the most basic
requirement of an airport, to allow them to fly, has divertedattention from
some of the other foibles of Terminal 5. Arriving passengers who wish to
check in for an onward flight are required to travel down two levels to the
Underground station before ascending five floors to departures, all in lifts
that have no call buttons to push from the outside, nor floor numbers to
push once inside.

Ironically, the debacle at Terminal 5 has helped the rest of the airport
function more efficiently. Although some terminals have been fuller than
usual due to refugees from T5, the fact that BA cancelled an average of
three departures and three arrivals an hour during the day eased pressure on
the apron and in the skies.

The essential amateurish nature of our transport enterprises was made clear
at 4am yesterday. I went to a bus stop in central London to catch the 4am
bus to Heathrow so I could hopefully meet some of the staff and talk to
them. The bus did not show up. But in a very British way we queued in the
rain for a bus that did not come to try to reach an airport terminal that
did not work.

Upset, resentful and baffled: that sums up not just the tens of thousands of
passengers whose plans were wrecked in the first two days of Terminal 5
"live", but also the hundreds of staff in the front line. British Airways
has its work cut out to patch up relations with its employees, never mind
its customers.

At the end of April, the stresses on T5 will double when many
intercontinental flights from Terminal 4 are switched. Yet even when all the
moves are completed, a significant proportion of transit travellers will
still face tortuous inter-terminal connections: Sydney, Singapore, Lisbon,
Helsinki and other notable cities are excluded from the new facility.
Indeed, one irony about this Spanish-owned piece of infrastructure (BAA is
part of Ferrovial) is that you can go to a dozen countries around Europe -
but not Spain; if you have a ticket to Madrid or Barcelona, you need to be
at Terminal 1. Or 2. Or 3. Life at Heathrow seems destined never to be easy.

Lord Rogers' elegant steel-and-glass gateway to the skies could have amazed
the world. But the chance was lost, and instead the airport, city and nation
have amused the world.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...er-terminal-5-
is-a-breathtaking-display-of-institutional-hubris-802331.html