Updated: British Airways in Chaos After LHR Terminal Switch

[Matt Molnar]

Bloomberg:

British Airways Prepares for Overnight Terminal Move

By Tracy Alloway

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- British Airways Plc, Europe's third- largest carrier, will shift operations tonight to a new 4.3 billion-pound ($8.6 billion) terminal at London Heathrow in the biggest airport move in U.K. history.

The airline will relocate more than 1,000 aircraft, ground vehicles and pieces of equipment between 11 p.m. London time tonight and 4 a.m. tomorrow. British Airways aims to make the move without interrupting the flight schedule of Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport.

The equipment will be transferred in a convoy, supervised by 250 of the airline's employees and 100 volunteers, that will travel three miles (5 kilometers) from Heathrow Terminals 1 and 4 to the new Terminal 5. The building is opening to the public tomorrow and British Airways will be its only occupant. Campaign groups plan to protest, saying the expansion will lead to more travel that harms the environment. [Full Story]

[adam613]

They should call up the airport authority guys in Hong Kong...they moved to an entirely new airport in a similar period of time!

[cancidas]

would be interesting to see the convoy itself. each and every beltloader, tug and catering truck pass by. i'm wondering if thier technology infrastructure is also being moved tonight or has that been done already...

[Matt Molnar]

Heathrow T5 Opening `Chaotic' as Flights Are Canceled (Update1)

By Tracy Alloway and Clementine Fletcher

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- London Heathrow airport's 4.3 billion-pound ($8.6 billion) fifth terminal canceled flights and shut down its baggage system on the first day of operations, prompting passengers to brand the opening ``chaotic.''

About 33 flights were scrapped, said Sue Redmond, a spokeswoman for British Airways Plc, the terminal's sole occupant. Baggage check-in at the new building has been suspended until further notice to give the airport time to resolve operational issues, said a spokeswoman for Heathrow owner BAA Ltd. who declined to be identified. [Full Article]

[hiss srq]

Heathrow T5 Opening `Chaotic' as Flights Are Canceled (Update1)

By Tracy Alloway and Clementine Fletcher

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- London Heathrow airport's 4.3 billion-pound ($8.6 billion) fifth terminal canceled flights and shut down its baggage system on the first day of operations, prompting passengers to brand the opening ``chaotic.''

About 33 flights were scrapped, said Sue Redmond, a spokeswoman for British Airways Plc, the terminal's sole occupant. Baggage check-in at the new building has been suspended until further notice to give the airport time to resolve operational issues, said a spokeswoman for Heathrow owner BAA Ltd. who declined to be identified. [Full Article]

Sounds like somthing I like to call the Qik/SHARES disaster. Except thje change was physical this time.

[Ari707]

More than 400,000 passengers were scheduled to pass through Terminal 5 today on 380 flights, about 350 of them short-haul and domestic services

thats an average of 1052 pax per flight?????

[Matt Molnar]

Haha, I think that was a typo. A press release I just read said 40,000.

[Matt Molnar]

Terminal disgrace: Fights break out among queuing passengers as Heathrow opening descends into chaos
Last updated at 14:22pm on 28.03.08

Fights broke out among passengers queuing at Heathrow's Terminal 5 this morning, as British Airways announced it was cancelling a fifth of its flights.

As the chaos spilled over into a second day, BA's chief executive Willie Walsh admitted that the shambolic opening of the £4.3billion facility was 'not our finest hour' and said more cancellations are expected tomorrow.

But although he acknowledged 'the buck stops with me', Mr Walsh refused to resign over the shambles. [Full Article]

[cancidas]

But although he acknowledged 'the buck stops with me', Mr Walsh refused to resign over the shambles. [Full Article]

why should he resign? did he majorly screw up the plan to apease his own personal ideas? i admit, fights breaking out among pax are bad though.

[mirrodie]

This is all a result of retiring Concorde.

Absolutely shameful.


:twisted:

[T-Bird76]

Typical British pride and ego ;) thinking they can flip a switch and BAM everything will be normal. You don't move into a new building like this and move your entire operation and not expect the $hit to hit the fan. BA should have done a "soft" opening only moving certain flight to test out the waters so to speak.

God Save the Queen!

[Tom_Turner]

Reading the last article, it's a fairly shocking collapse. There were multiple points of failure and all the time in the world to have ensured at least some of them did not happen (or happen as they did).

I don't think management "gets it" and thats a bad sign.

<<In a statement last night BA said: "British Airways apologises to customers for the problems during Terminal Five's first day of operations following one of the most complex and largest airport moves in history.">> italics added

<<As the chaos spilled over into a second day, BA's chief executive Willie Walsh admitted that it was 'not our finest hour' >> italics added

Corporate and the chief executive both issuing statements - the first an "apology" with a caveat attached and the next an "admission" characterized by an extreme understatement.

This is a joke. The Chief Executive is involved in dress code minutiae, and somehow is oblivious to potential problems in an enormous ("planned") operational matter?

Tom

[Matt Molnar]

It seems the baggage system is the biggest problem, which always seems to be the problem at new facilities.

I was pretty excited to be landing there during my trip next month, but now I'm a bit nervous.

[LGA777]

For those of you who have not been following this its has been a huge disaster for both BA and the BAA. And IMO it is the result of very poor planning, here is the post I made on the Blue site this morning with my take, enjoy.

As an American who has been an airline employee working in airports for 26 years I would like to add a respectful coment to the planners in charge at BA. Since they where not just moving one operation overnight from one Terminal to another but two large and seperate operations of the same airline I would have done the following different even before I heard of this chaos.

I would have moved the short haul operations from T1 first and scheduled the T4 longhaul operations move for "tentatively" one week later.

I would have a had a plan B in place so that if the former T1 flights had major glitches at T5 then the longhauls could stay at T4 a week or two longer if needed until the above glitches are resolved. Anotherwords a tentetive move date and a back up one with the travelling public informed of same and to verify which Terminal to go to a day or so before your flight.

During the first week the T1 one flights where at T5 each T4 employee should work at least one day at T5 for a real hands on orientation with actual passengers, baggage and live flights, even if the aircraft where smaller than they normally work.

Almost every move like this in the US is done on a Saturday night - Sunday morning when there are reduced schedules, reduced passenger loads, and very reduced bread and butter buisness passengers. Why this was not done has me shaking my head.

And finally the week after Easter, what where they thinking ?

And BTW I have personally been involved in two such moves so I am more than an armchair CEO like some on this board.

Just my respectful 2 cents from across the pond.

LGA777

2 other things to add. The two moves I was involved with where,

in 1984-85 I was a Station Mgr for Northeastern International and I was briefly responsible for LAX (in additon to OKC which I opened and closed approx 10 months later). Anyway when I got to LAX QS gates we shared with primarily Pan Am in the origianal T2. But both us and Capital had our ticket counters in a temporary bubble type terminal known locally as T1A. During my 6 weeks as the LAX SM I cordinated our ticket counters move from T1A to T2. Sounds tiny compared to what just happened in LHR and it was but I was 24, still pretty green and for me it was a big deal. BTW it was during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Move number 2 many of you may have already guessed was US's LGA move from then Fingers 1-2-3 at the CTB to our brand new LGA East End or "Premier" Terminal as it was officially known then.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A967958260

For that move I had much, much less responsibuility. I prefered to stay on the side lines filming lots of video on the last day of the old and first day at the new. Even got night video of many of the Terminating aircraft arriving at the old gates, deplaning, then pushing back to taxi over to the new Terminal for the morning Originators. Despite my playing and videoing I did assist in helping to set up our new Ramp Tower. And for my 3 nycaviation co-workers I did work my first shift at the new place on day 1 working Ramp Control which was our first day ever working it as at the old gates AA worked one alley and TWA the other two.

Okay I'm done rambling now, Goodnight !

LGA777

[Matt Molnar]

Now Saturday morning in London, which brings Day 3 of the T5 fiasco. BA is expecting only 54 cancellations today.

A bit about the baggage system: over 10 1/2 miles of conveyors and 400,000 man hours spent developing the software to run it. That tells me they built something from scratch that's never been used in the real world before, which is where the problem lies. Sure the developers probably sat down with ramp folks and operations folks and asked them what they wanted. But developers and engineers don't always understand the best way to translate ideas into products that are usable by the average person. That's not the only problem, of course. This thing has been on the drawing board for 20 years...had BA simply tested it for an extra week perhaps they could have fixed most of the problems.