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The new Heathrow airport terminal became a nightmare for the passengers. |
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Travel Articles >> Locations >> Europe >> Great Britain >> London
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BA, the only operator of the terminal that has been built for 20 years and costs 8,6 billion dollars has told that at the second day after the opening – every fifth flight is being canceled and for the remaining 80% of the flights there is a probability of the continued delays for the arriving and departing planes. More than 90 flights have been canceled. The terminal can service 540-550 flights per day. Long queues of passengers are staying at the counters, desperately trying to obtain the departure or at least the return of the already checked-in luggage. The longest queue is located at the registration counters where the distressed collaboratives of the airline are doing their best to help at least somehow the people that have spent the night on the floor of the huge terminal area. They try to rearrange the tickets to another flights or airports or offer the immediate money-back for the tickets for the flights via the “gate to Britain”. The correspondents of the British mass-media are practicing in the offensive headlines addressed to the terminal, though they admit that the absence of victims of this chaos – is the achievement of the airport security service that does not allow panic or mass indignation expressions inside of the terminal. On the other hand, the passenger destinies have aroused the activity of the demonstrants – those who were against the expansion of the airport that have arranged a manifestation before the entrance to the new terminal. This event took place without serious incidents and peacefully. The fifth Heathrow terminal, which opening was attended by the Queen Elisabeth II, has began it's work recently. It is linked with the London city center with a high-speed railway Heathrow Express and also a branch of the metro and bus routes. The Queen has named the new terminal “the Gate to Britain” at the opening ceremony. It's launch has been characterized by the advertising agencies as “the new beginning of the Heathrow”, one of the largest world airports. The occurred chaos had a systematic character and has been developing in various directions: baggage transporter belts that were supposed to transfer 12 thousands items of luggage per hour, went out of order, the passenger escalators have been working unstable, periodically computers were also off. At first, the terminal administration has promised to manage the outages on their own, then began the mobilization of the collaboratives of the other terminals and branches from the whole country but after that admitted the fault, periodically apologizing for the issues via the intercom. “That was surely not our best time” - told the representative of the BA management Willy Walsh to the journalists and added sadly that the problems in Heathrow will continue. The British Airways airline, by the way, is not a newbie in the question of the luggage problems. According to the rating of the most unconcentrated carriers, comprised in 2007 by the Association of the European airlines, this airline was the leader in the total amount of the lost luggage. The system, designed to process 18 thousands of baggage items per day, had to process 23 thousands and therefore, the warehouses of the airline according to their consent, have accumulated 20 thousands of unsorted luggage items; the collaboratives of the baggage department told in the same time to the journalists that the amount is actually closer to 40 thousands. Already in this year, not long before the opening of the terminal, BA even had to ask passengers to travel without luggage. The reason was the malfunction of the transport equipment of the fourth terminal. And the technically advanced baggage check-in system of the fifth terminal was one of the main pride subjects of it's creators. Besides, before the launch of the terminal there was a scandal about another novelty – the procedure of the fingerprint scanning of the passengers of the internal British flights. It was supposed that fingerprint scanning would help to prevent the potential “personality swap” in the border zone of the airport, when a potential terrorist or an illegal immigrant that came from abroad, could exchange the boarding passes with a passenger of an internal flight and arrive to another British city without immigration control. However, the British Information Commissioners Office announced that this procedure does not comply with the current legislation. As the result, the administration of the Airport has decided to postpone the procedure of the fingerprinting, and has been satisfied with a simple photographing. |
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