Check-in suspended at £4.3bn T5

even the new athens airport operated from day one with no problems whatsoever :p

sounds like a scandal to me though , so many billions for nothing...like the wembley etc
 
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The toll so far:

- Thursday : 68 flights cancelled
- Friday : 72 flights cancelled
- Saturday : 54 flights cancelled


Fortunately BA NYC flights have not moved from T4 yet. I do this trip twice a month. Unfortunately I have to connect at LHR to get to CPH. CPH has moved to T5. NYC "may" be moved to T5 30th April, depending on how things develop.

Booked all my coming sectors on T3 based airlines until late April.
Sorry to say BA but losing my bags three times in a row when flying to NYC and now the T5 shambles means my business is going elsewhere for some time.
 
Killajaz said:
The toll so far:

- Thursday : 68 flights cancelled
- Friday : 72 flights cancelled
- Saturday : 54 flights cancelled
Click to expand...


Oh, great. So it's only a disaster as opposed to a full-blown catastrophe. Joygasm.

Seriously - did they actually test this system at all? They certainly can't have tested it to anything approaching a Real World™ degree - if they had, the problem would have jumped out at them. Effectively, that means they actually didn't test it at all. They simply trusted it to luck that it'd be "alright on the night". Or maybe not even that - they knew that it was shakey, took the money for flights, and figured they'd just about get by.

Someone has to carry the can for this. Surely.
 
when i think that its the same company doing the automation for T5 as it is for my place.... i'm not really surprised lol.

it's a very poor show as they would have done hundreds of simulations and i can imagine the problem lies mainly with luggage not conforming to certain tolerences and it's just caused it to backlog and fail.

sounds similar to somewhere else. ;)
 
They are supposed to have had 12000 bags continously running on the baggage system for the last two years. Taken off one end and put back on at the beginning to make sure the system reads the bags correctly and routes them to the right places. The also had two trials with lots of people. Obviously a working terminal is harder on the system/staff than the trails they layed out.
 
Whoever said the shops are expensive - they will be regardless of type, BAA levies a significant tax (28% IIRC) on all sales within the airport..

And yes, BA are a joke - they happily pay their freight planners even if they leave their shift early, but baggage handlers and the like get shafted.
 
JRS said:
Seriously - did they actually test this system at all? They certainly can't have tested it to anything approaching a Real World™ degree - if they had, the problem would have jumped out at them. Effectively, that means they actually didn't test it at all. They simply trusted it to luck that it'd be "alright on the night". Or maybe not even that - they knew that it was shakey, took the money for flights, and figured they'd just about get by.
Click to expand...
From what I've read, there's nothing wrong with the system itself. If anything, it's worked too well.

All the bags got to their destination, and compounded by too few staff, half of them being stuck in security trying to get to their jobs, and complete lack of any decent training, the bags weren't being unloaded. Bags pile up. System shuts down.
 
csmager said:
From what I've read, there's nothing wrong with the system itself. If anything, it's worked too well.

All the bags got to their destination, and compounded by too few staff, half of them being stuck in security trying to get to their jobs, and complete lack of any decent training, the bags weren't being unloaded. Bags pile up. System shuts down.
Click to expand...
The system test they did obviously didn't factor in people waiting six hours for a full background check, fingerprint and retina scan, and full DNA check ;)
 
I think a big deal has been made out of this though, the terminal is going to be open for more than 20 years and on the first few days it has gone a bit wrong, by next week it'll probably be running like clockwork. Of course, they should have made it clear there would be big delays.

I have read that some BA baggage handlers were not going to go to work on the opening day since it would have been a stressful day, that kind of attitude is what ruins it for everyone. Ofcourse not all are like that..


My dad actually took part in the trials and said they were testing the system pretty heavily, chucking loads and loads of bags on, but a simulation is nothing like real life!
 
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They made a mistake. OK - Get over it.

I'm sure everyone will be compensated in some way, and others will refuse to fly with them again. It's not the end of the world, and they are just providing a service after all. There's far worse things to get annoyed / stressed about even if you do miss 2 days of your hols, or don't arrive with your bags.


That said, they should have gradually phased up the departures to see what they could handle. It would be the logical thing to me anyway. Start with 10 deartures a day, then increase by 10% every 3 months. It wouldn't be that difficult to plan or co-ordinate compared to this fiasco & at least they could clearly see what level of staffing they needed and what additional training was required as they ramped up to full capacity over the space of say 18 months.
 
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