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| Travel news in January |
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 | Chaos at Heathrow – embarrassment for British Airways |
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Heathrow’s newest Terminal 5 is open for business and immediately turns out to be a real trouble-shooter. Instead of being an easy and enjoyable way to start or end your journey, Terminal 5 has suffered from flight delays and cancellations since its opening in March 2008.
Although the terminal was tested in a phase between September 2007 and March 2008 in order to avoid any faults and problems which usually occur in the first days after opening a new terminal, Terminal 5 was faced with severe problems. British Airways had to cancel 54 short-haul flights, almost 300 flights have been scrapped and many bags were separated from their owners. According to the airport operators problems were caused by the terminal''s high-tech baggage-handling system which was designed by an integrated team from BAA, BA and Vanderlande Industries of the Netherlands. The system is supposed to handle about 70.000 bags per day using an automatic identification, explosives screening, fast tracking for urgent bags, sorting and automatic sorting and passenger reconciliation.
British Airways which is the only airline leaving from Terminal 5 at the moment claimed that the terminal had an 80% capacity utilisation on Friday but delays for the running flights had to be expected. On Friday passengers were only allowed hand luggage but could later check in their normal luggage as well. Spokesmen of British Airways apologized for the disappointment caused. The problems have definitely been an embarrassment for British Airways and Heathrow since Terminal 5 took nearly two decades to be built and was supposed to relieve the overcrowded Heathrow Airport.
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