The Hindu Business Line : Heathrow: Countdown to Terminal 5

Long passenger queues at the London Heathrow airport will be a thing of the past when the new £4.3 billion Terminal 5 is inaugurated on March 27, 2008, according to Mr Paul Coby, Chief Information Officer, British Airways.

“We are aiming at zero queues at Terminal 5. A passenger would only need to come to the terminal and walk straight to the aircraft. To achieve zero queues will be a tremendous achievement, because queuing up in airports is endemic,” Mr Coby told Business Line during a recent visit to Chennai.

Between 2002 and 2006, the average delay at Heathrow increased to 18.8 minutes from 16.3 minutes, according to a British government report.

British Airways will have exclusive access of Terminal 5. “When Terminal 5 opens, around 30 million passengers will move out of our existing terminals. Terminal 5 will revolutionise the way that passengers experience air travel,” Mr Coby said.

Heathrow hassle

“It is a terrible hassle (at Heathrow) where the infrastructure is designed for fewer passengers.

Together with security issues, it is not a great passenger experience. Punctuality and baggage performance remain a challenge at Heathrow where facilities are old and overstretched. Heathrow was designed to handle 45 million passengers, but today looks after 67 million passengers per year. Both these key areas will be improved significantly when British Airways moves to its new home in T5,” he said.

Passenger comfort

The ‘high-tech’ Terminal 5 would offer ‘unparalleled’ standards of passenger comfort and convenience with smoother check-in processes, the latest baggage management system and the largest lounge complex in the world.

“It will redefine British Airways’ customer promise under the banner of “BA Basics and Brilliance — ensuring consistent high-quality service 24/7 and brilliance where it counts.”

British Airways would move towards 80 per cent of passengers using online check-in or using a self-service kiosk when they arrive at the terminal.

There would be 96 self-service kiosks and 140 customer service desks, including 96 fast bag drops. Passenger flows had been extensively modelled to ensure minimal queuing at every stage, he said.

Trials on

A six-month trial of all the new processes and equipment was under way to ensure T5 would be a ‘flagship’ for the UK and a showcase to welcome the 2012 Olympics. The first major public trials began recently to ensure customers can speed through check-in. In this, Tata Consultancy Services was involved in the testing procedures, he said.

Indian traffic

Terminal 5 would be a ‘great’ passenger experience for the large number of Indian visitors to London every year.

“It will be really important for us in terms of Indian traffic with a lot of people flying out of the top Indian metros to Heathrow for business or leisure. It will give us a modern hub, which will work well for Indians,” he said. Last year around 2.30 lakh Indians visited London, up from 1.30 lakh four years ago.

As large as Hyde Park

The new terminal consists of one main terminal and two satellite terminals that altogether cover a space as large as London’s Hyde Park. That’s five times the size of Terminal 4, the current long-haul base.

Terminal 5 also boasts a new air traffic control tower; a 605-bed hotel directly connected to the terminal building and a total of 60 aircraft stands — 14 of which have been designed to cater to supersize Airbus A380s.

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