Heathrow 'calm' but cancellations continue

Passengers arriving at Heathrow’s Terminal Five today saw nothing of the chaos which has engulfed the building in past days.

Passengers were moving so smoothly through the system at the new terminal that queues barely had a chance to form at bag drop desks. Security points were also free of congestion.

But such relative calm has only been achieved as BA continues to axe flights from its anticipated schedule. Travellers booked on 50 services today have been told they will need to rebook, in addition to the 54 flights cancelled yesterday and countless others in the previous four days.

The airline is also, behind the scenes, frantically working through a backlog of 19,000 bags which are in temporary storage after they were separated from their owners.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh said that he hoped 5,000 pieces of lost luggage would start to make their way back to their owners today.

The British government yesterday put the number of lost bags at 28,000 but later said that different accounting methods used by BA and airport operator BAA explained the discrepancy.

Also yesterday Mr Walsh admitted that T5’s first day was a “disaster” and said he was “bitterly disappointed” that it was not the success it should have been.

He said: “I know the press will portray this as Heathrow chaos. But for many of those people (who have passed through T5) it will have been a pleasant experience and I remain very confident that T5 will deliver.”

Aviation minister Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons yesterday that passengers using the new £4.3bn (€5.4bn) terminal had suffered “an unacceptably poor experience”.

Passengers should get the assistance and compensation to which they were entitled, he said.

He added that the baggage system in the terminal had become “clogged” and broken down on a number of occasions since last Thursday’s opening.

Theresa Carruthers from Hertfordshire arrived today for her flight to Geneva to what she described as a “calm, organised” scene.

She said: “I know there have been problems but it really does seem to be working smoothly now. I couldn’t possibly complain. Look at it, there’s no queues at all. This is a long way from the chaos you'd normally see in other terminals at this time of day.”