T5 goes pear-shaped
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314816.stm

Read it and weep

The baggage system has basically gone kapult. BA canceling lots of flights as there's no way to get bags from check-in to planes and planes to baggage claims.

It's a disaster.

Now, we'll see if all the shuffling of airlines to their respective new terminals and new airlines/flights, starting in 2 days, will be a even bigger disaster.

All those references to teething... Sounds more like the gnashing of teeth than teething.

Here's an updated link from BBC:

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7317352.stm

I love this story. What have they been doing in T5 for the last few months? Why was the testing of the baggage system so poor, and why if it was noticed, did they open the terminal?

They should execute those responsible, and put their severed heads on a baggage carousel for inconvenienced passengers to gawk at! (if they can find one that works)

Calm down. It's just an opening day.

What matters isn't whether this terminal's first day is a cockup - though you do have to query the sanity of anyone flying through it on opening day. Haven't they heard of, for example, the spectacular screw-up Hong Kong managed for its first MONTH?

It's whether by May the place begins to behave like a civilised airport. Which - those of you with short memories may have forgotten - T4 managed after its first few weeks in 1986.

BA and BAA aren't there to provide one flawless day. Their job is to provide 99% consistency 366 dsays of a leap year.

After the chortlings over this ineptitude, let's leave the real judgements for a few weeks. But in the meantime: London has four other international airports and LHR has four other terminals.

Question the sanity of those who fly though it on opening day?

Are you trying to blame the customer? Or why don't BA just don't operate on 3/27? Then everybody can fly through it on "the next day". :D

And let me start think about similarities between HKG and LHR T5... Hm...

If you're dumb enough to use an airport on its opening day, you've only got yourself to blame when (not if) it goes wrong.

Of course I'm blaming the customer. Unless they're more interested in five seconds on TV whingeing about their "ruined" day than getting where they want to be on time.

In which case, they got what they wanted, so what are they moaning about?

Flanner it might be a little more correct to be more specific - you would have to be crazy to use a new airport in the UK on its first day.

It just wouldn't happen in Germany. Italy perhaps - German nope!

BTW was anyone really suprised by this? what would habe been a shocker was T5 not being BBC headline news at 10pm.

" you would have to be crazy to use a new airport in the UK on its first day"

Well, my friend Alina is ! She is in Reading on a business trip and she had tickets to come back to Edinburgh tonight at about 9 PM from T5 LOL
I still don't know where she is right now....

If she didn't die of boredom in Reading - T5 will finish her off - what a way to spend your final hours!

"It just wouldn't happen in Germany. Italy perhaps - German nope!"

How do you know? How many 600,000 passenger a week airports has Germany ever opened?

Incidentally, when Germany's State-owned railway killed 101 people at a single go in 1998, which German newspaper or TV station carried out the kind of investigation into its public servants' lethal incompetence British papers would start if the the 1627 to Moreton in Marsh were 10 mins late? Why has the court case against the (government employed) culprits been dropped? Which brave German newspaper has bothered delving into that?

And was T5's first day really that much worse than Hong Kong's? Or Denver's? Or Madrid's? Or Tokyo's?

The only real difference is that we have a press that doesn't get brow-beaten into suppressing screw-up stories.

Unlike Germany, where brown-nosing the government is what the press is there for.

For the record, the passenger terminal of HKG opened without problem. The main problem was with the cargo terminal.

When the current DEN opened, it had similar meltdown with its luggage handling system. But I don't remember flights being canceled or 12,000 bags "lost", which was the last numbers I read.

i agree with markrosy. did anyone expect things to go right here?

i'm currently working in a 3 year old, very expensive international corporate headquarters. the workmanship is appalling. the detail has been completely ignored and nothing works (not necessarily broken but just not 'fit for purpose' (the most severe insult in the british language).

hotels and most other large buildings never work right and uk's housing is by far the most poorly built in europe. just toured a friend's brand new £800k house and the workmanship and detail of the design was disgusting.

mr uk's excuses for this mess just show how we have been conditioned to accept the heaps of shite that are fed to us at every turn in this country. but accepting shite with a stiff upper lip is just our way....polite acceptance just encourages more shite....and our lip muscles have to get stronger as we get more shite. when our builders are working at 1/2 the pace they should and giving us shite, we just make them tea and look the other way. "that's lovely" we say with our stiff upper lip.

Now which airport was it they mentioned on the 'Today' programme this morning ? Apparently consistently one of the top-rated ones now but took *a year* to get over its teething problems. Was it Kuala Lumpur ?

Thailands new airport opened too early and there were plenty of "Teething" problems. The runway has even cracked in places. AND as someone said Heathrow does accommodate 600k passengers A DAY. I personally will not go near T5 for months and am suprised people didnt expect problems - granted not on this scale.(that and the fact that i prefer VA anyway....)

Interesting comments here:

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thre...20080328141524

If you click on the "readers recommend" tab, quite a few Brits warn that the ongoing "teething problems" at T5 are a taste of what the Olympics in London will be like.

What I found amusing about the whole mess was the way airport officials fretted that the anti-expansion protesters would "disrupt operations." Instead of fretting, perhaps BA/BAA should hire the protesters as efficiency consultants as they were the only ones properly organized!

BBC World trumpeted

HEATROW HORROR
HEALTHROW HELL

Apparently the BAir staff did not know the lay out of the new terminal even - had trouble themselves getting thru security

I can find no excuse for this chaos - don't they do dry runs

It joins IMO other English technolocy fiascos like The London Eye, which could not be successfully lifted for some time, the Bridge to St Paul's which had to close the day it opened as it shook too much

the APT advanced passenger train on whose press run frightened all the media on it and had to abort

Virgin's Pendolino inaugural run had to be pulled into the station by a switch engine

The Millennium Dome - nough said about that

The Diana Fountain in Hyde Park had to be closed down after opening because it was too dangerous

I don't know but i rarely hear of these types of mind-boggling embarrassments in other European countries

Please don't take this as an anti-English tirade but these type of things seem endemic in England and it's kind of funny

The irony is that during the time before T5's opening, BA/BAA kept boasting about T5's "state-of-the-art" luggage handling system. And the embarrassing thing is it was the luggage system that broke down!

The news article mentioned that the staff had been trained for the last 6 months etc. I guess they didn't need security clearance during the dry-run? Looks like part of the problem was the baggage handlers couldn't get clearance to where they're supposed to be.

As much as I love the UK and enjoyed my visits there, I'm sorry, but this is really a big flop!

When Madrid Barajas T4 opened, they had a wealth of failures. But then , everybody here was not surprised , everyone take it for granted that it will not be working properly until some weeks later : "oh, well, this is Spain, things work like that" :)

Now , I'm thinking Spaniards are not alone :)

Well yes perhaps in Spain too

with the fiasco of the high-speed AVE Madrid-Barcelona line's legendary problems.

Now , I'm thinking Spaniards are not alone >>>

Certainly not. We know all our big projects will go tits-up (technical term). However we always hope that it will be "alright on the night" and that we'll muddle through as we usually do.

Bob, I wouldn't have thought whether or not the Diana fountain worked properly was exactly of international importance!

BTW, the Eye is now one of the UK's top tourists attractions. As for the Pendolino trains, the survival rate of the Cumbria train crash rather suggests that was money well spent.

RM

I agree

it just seems that so many ballyhooed things have such unexpected problems

But T5 Heathrow thing tops them all for incompetence IMO

incredible and yes could happen anywhere i guess

maybe it's Gordon Brown's fault?

flanner wasn't aware of that one.

On my theme - anyone catch Grand Designs on C4 the other week. The one with the Baufritz house in Bath. The Germans planned everything to perfection - built the house in 4 days 8 hours 32 minutes (around 45 minutes ahead of schedule). the only part that was left to the Brits was the stone facing. Sure enough 7 months after completion Kevin McCloud came to do his "oh haven't you done well to only over-spend the budget by 245% interview". Sure enough the house still was without its cladding.

Life is so much easy to face with social stereotypes and generalisations, don't you know.

OK, so "it's just an opening day" huh? Are we still "blaming the customer" now that BA has announced continued cancellations through the middle of next week?

I'm sorry, but the ineptitude of the tag team of BA and BAA is just TOO familiar to frequent Heathrow frequent travelers.

Haven't heard any more BA pilot strike updates, but this T-5 thing could all be resolved with a strike.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...irwaysbusiness

I wonder how many of the 15,000 plus bags stranded at Heathrow will ever get returned to their owners. Plus many travelers are complaining that they can't get through to the BA T5 help line.

BA pilots are furious about this debacle...on one web site, they said they felt like "lions led by donkeys."

How different the reality is from the triumphant crowing about T5 that accompanies the Queen's visit:

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of airports operator BAA, which has funded the terminal, said the building represented "a living, breathing advertisement for Britain's ambition".

"Terminal 5 marks the start of a new beginning for Heathrow, for BAA and for our millions of passengers," he said.

"It is by any standard a triumph of ambition, commitment and collaboration. It will breathe new life into Heathrow, allowing us to continue our transformation of the rest of the airport and will put Heathrow and BAA back where they belong - at the leading edge of global travel."

Which airlines are going to be moved to T5? I'm flying in on American in mid May, do I need to figure out a way to take everything carry on?

I didn't realize Heathrow was opening a new terminal when I made my reservations months ago. Whoops.

Kenderina, que comico! Love your sense of humor. Seems Madrid has things figured out now, and I'm sure London will soon, too. I hope so, by September, when we pass thru Heathrow, lol!

we need to give up the olympics before we really embarrass ourselves. of course, all things have their problems but the problems causing this mess here are deep and cultural. we manage by figurehead and entitlement. 'detail' is beneath us....we'll just hire people with paper qualifications to manage the detail. the problem is that these clowns can't see the bigger picture when their nose is stuck in their qualifications. 'understanding a customer' - that's just a vulgar little detail for the figureheads and a far too complex and multi-disciplined concept for a qualification junky to understand.

so we have our figureheads - the useless clowns with sir in their name and we have our qualified this and qualified that who aren't trained to see the forest for the trees (or however that expression goes).

then we have the indifference in the society that encourages our businesses and governments to produce such slop.

Iowa redhead - T5 is for BA only, so you don't need to worry.
I on the other hand do - I'm booked BA from AMS to PHX via LHR T5. It was the reason I decided finally on BA - that I'd not have to negotiate half of LHR to transfer flights. I'm hoping it is sorted by May.
I heard this morning that BA are now not going to transfer all long haul flights to T5 for several months. So I may end up on a schlepp through Heathrow after all, always assuming I can get there in the first place. I shall keep a close eye on the BA site!

They had similar problems in Hong Kong and (I think) Dallas.
You'd have thought that the BAA people would have had the sense to go to both places, asked what went wrong and learned by the mistakes.
Personally, I'd have started by transferring just a few flights to begin with and gradually building up.
But, then I'm just a daft little old lady ;-)

Well, at least its roof hasn't collapsed (yet) unlike that airport just north-east of Paris.

Now you think this is bad what do we do about the Olympic games (ask every one to come back in a week's time).

<<< unlike that airport just north-east of Paris. >>>

You mean the main Paris Airport - Charles de Gaulle - and it was one section in a passageway

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3739715.stm

I thought that it was quite obvious to which airport I was referring. (Orly is south).

The collapse at Terminal 2E in 2004 might have just been one section in a passageway, but it did result in all of terminal 2E being demolished and rebuilt. It is due to open this summer.

"the APT advanced passenger train on whose press run frightened all the media on it and had to abort"

Nonsense. Journalists got pissed and got sick, big deal. Politicians pushed the train into 'service' despite it being in no way ready. Don't blame the people working on the thing, and look up the definition of 'prototype'.

And when on the East Coast Main Line, remember that much of the train is a direct descendent of the APT.