Terminal 5 no Heathrow panacea

UPDATE - latest news here 

British Airways vaunted Terminal 5   (recently opened by the Queen) was supposed to alleviate some of the chaos and congestion that is London’s Heathrow. Well, it didn’t work.  The terminal crashed Thursday and today, or at least its incredibly complex subterranean luggage handling system did. Twenty percent of BA’s flights were canceled and guess what - no checked luggage, If you flew ouf of 5 it was carry-on only. Share this story with your friends who think you’re a ridiculous travel geek/luggage freak!

Some excerpts from RTTNews:

British Airways on Friday canceled about 20% of the flights scheduled from Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5, after a chaotic opening to the GBP 4.3 billion facility yesterday.

The airliner said it was canceling around 76 planned flights from domestic and short-distance European destinations to places like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Paris and Frankfurt. British Airways said that all long distance flights from Terminal 5, or T5, would operate normally.

The operations at Terminal 1 and Terminal 4 will function normally, the airline company added.

In a release issued on early Friday, British Airways said that passengers will be able to check in with both hand and hold baggage. On Thursday, the airline had allowed passengers traveling in the afternoon and evening to carry only hand luggage, after its baggage system to carry luggage on and off flights failed.

 

Gee, 4 is still running. I have had some misery there. I’ll bet 5 has that priceless “new terminal” smell though.

 

From the BBC story: One baggage handler said it was “a shambles the moment the doors opened”.

 

One saving grace - only BA uses T5, but you’ve got to think it’s screwed up the whole wretched place.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Alexandra]

When flying to other places in Europe my husband and I always avoid flying through LHR.... Even though we fly carry on, it is still too stressful

[Andrew]

Heathrow is terrible. My girlfriend and I transferred through Heathrow on our way back from Barcelona. Because it was a return trip, we checked in the larger of our carry-on bags.

Despite the fact that we were transferring from one flight to another in the same terminal, we had to wait in an enormous security queue for about an hour--and ended up missing our flight (I called British Airways while in line to set up a new, later, flight--but the line was so long that we ended up missing that one, too!).

In any case, even after we managed to get ourselves home, our checked in luggage went missing. We didn't see it for three weeks, and when it arrived, the insides had gotten wet (a few books were ruined), hot (the chocolates we had bought were melted), and pilfered (my girlfriend's cheaper camera equipment, like extra battery and timer, were missing).

We plan to never fly British Airways or transfer through Heathrow again. If you must transfer through Heathrow, I advise scheduling at least three hours between connections in case of delays.