Sky News business presenter Emma Crosby
It doesn’t come as a huge surprise that British Airways has decided to postpone transferring its long-haul flights to Terminal 5.
After a dreadful opening which has seen hundreds of flights cancelled and thousands of bags go missing the second phase of this project was unlikely to be immune to problems.
The airline says it’s long-haul flights are unlikely to take off from T5 until 5th June at the earliest.
That’s two months away. So is BA is playing it ultra-safe by giving the new system more time to bed down or can the company see a serious problem that’ll take more than eight weeks to iron out? What do you think?
Maybe BA should just get on with phase two now that passengers expect delays as it’ll be far more damaging if a fresh set of problems emerge come June 5th.
Do passengers care which terminal they fly from? Well BA’s customers who are jetting off to America, Africa and Asia will have to wait for the fine dining and deluxe shopping experience that T5 promises and make do with a pretty drab Terminal 4 for the next few weeks. But at least they have a better chance of their flight leaving on time or at all.
Both BA and airport operator BAA have walked stirred up yet another hornets' nest though, this time with rival airlines. Up until this point they have looked on in slight bemusement at the fiasco. Now this delay is starting to affect them, the gloves are off.
BMI’s boss Nigel Turner says "it’s an absolutely outrageous announcement by BAA and done with no thought, consideration or consultation of any other airline other than BA”.
That’s odd. Willie Walsh, the beleaguered boss of BA, told Sky News today that delaying the move of long-haul flights to T5 was “not in recognition of failure but recognition there we’re listening to people”.
Maybe the telephones aren’t working at BA HQ.
Is there anyone else they haven’t annoyed yet? Watch this space...
Fred
The equipment supplied probably came from China...let's blame them!
Posted by: Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 14 Apr 2008 14:38:37
All these props @ t5, keep getting fingers pointed, i wonder who was the contractor involved, any one know ??
Posted by: fred,scotland 13 Apr 2008 21:54:27
I for one am very shocked at this state of affairs in the UK.
If you were talking about our country, this would have been the norm. We are usually late with everything. We have a new motto presently ' it can wait until tomorrow'.
So if the UK has problems with T5 can you imagine the chaos here in 2010 for the World Cup !!
All in a days work! I'm sure Wille Walsh will sort it out in time to come.
Kind regards
Jeanette
Posted by: jeanette, south africa 12 Apr 2008 10:26:00
Terminal 5 is turning into a real dog's breakfast. I stated in an earlier blog, close T5 and get it working properly. They could park the planes at T5 and bus the passengers and luggage to the planes from other terminals..good solution. You can't fix something while it is in use, so stop and work the problem. It appears the people at the top do not know what do do in a crisis, get new people.
Posted by: Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 12 Apr 2008 07:23:07
Sir
If I may just re-assure the many a disturbed soul on behalf of BA and explain my theory.
You see, the travelling public as we know is of a diverse variety and that can be said for the contents of their baggage.
T5 employs the most advance in information technology resulting in what has been an experience, although not as new as promised.
Any new IT related project takes circa 6-8 weeks, from go live date, for the human side to embed within its influx of brain cells and due to the varied learning abilities, whilst paper based results say one thing, the reality of life is what we see before us today.
Now that BA has decided to delay international flights from T5 until June 5 is a fact that is understandable and must be further welcomed, so that systems can be diagnosed to perfection.
Thank you for your patience and we hope you have a pleasent and safe journey as you fly through the [Sky].
Other than that the choice is [Son-I-Que].
Happy Holidays and remember, it is for your safety and future comfort.
Posted by: Khalid 11 Apr 2008 17:32:22