A friend of mine who frequently flies out of London/Heathrow wrote to me recently and wondered why my coverage had been so light on the new Terminal 5. I guess I was just waiting to see when things calmed down. I mean, everyone has been talking about how horrible the problems have been since it opened, and I didn’t think I had much to add. Just about every facility has teething problems, even huge ones like we’ve seen in this case.

So, he gave me some good fodder for a post. Instead of focusing on the opening problems, let’s look at the experience as it’s supposed to be. The verdict? My friend is not so happy.

1. Limited-to-no premium check-in - My friend always flies business class for his frequent work trips, and he noticed that while there was a “tiny first class check in area,” there was “no dedicated first/gold card security lane” and “no business class check in at all.”
   
   Hmm, that didn’t seem right to me, but sure enough, that was BA’s plan all along. I spoke with John Lampl, spokesman for BA here in the US, about these issues, and he confirmed that “one of the concepts is . . . no dedicated queues for premium travelers, because what we expect them to do is check in online . . . get to the airport in time for their flight, go through the bag drop [if necessary] and security and go up to the lounge.”
   
   How strange. John says this comes from a great deal of research, but I know there are premium travelers who prefer the personal touch and want a human being to take care of things for them. Unfortunately now, if you want help from a real person, you have to wait in line with everyone else. The goal is, of course, to have no lines at all, but that’s not always realistic.




2. Security validation - Apparently BA has set up a fancy pants system that makes you scan your boarding pass when you go through security. According to John, if you have a valid boarding pass and you’re there more than 35 minutes prior to your flight’s departure time, then you shouldn’t have any trouble. That didn’t work out so well for my friend. He says:
   
   “I checked in online and printed [my] boarding pass but had to go to [the] check in desk to have my [ticket] ‘validated’ or activated in the system. This was after stopping by the first check in area and having been told to proceed to security.”
   
   Hmm, this doesn’t sound very good either. I’m sure there are opening day glitches, but it’s not far-fetched for a boarding pass to get corrupted or a system to malfunction. Sending someone back to the general check-in area every time there’s a problem is not only aggravating, but it’s poor customer service.




3. Lounge locations - As a gold card holder on BA, he’s entitled access to certain lounges. Apparently, it’s not very convenient in his eyes. He says:
   
   “There is a door into the lounge area right by security but it is for pax booked in first only (a gold card won’t cut it…) so to access the lounge you have to walk in a loop, go downstairs, then back upstairs.”
   
   That seems rather strange to me, but John says there is some hope here. “We had elevator problems in the first few days. He may have been forced to go downstairs and then upstairs.” So hopefully this one isn’t a problem.




4. Security bins - “Everything has to go in a security bin - even your bags. Someone tried to get way too clever and design an automatic bin return. Needless to say that does not work to well. And my carry-on got stuck in the stupid bin.”
   
   Yeah, that’s definitely frustrating. Sometimes, the most simple things are the best way to go. Designing an automatic return system may sound good in theory, but it could end up being more trouble than it’s worth. Hopefully this one is just part of those “opening day jitters.”




5. Lounge quality - Apparently, once my friend found the lounge, it was fine, but that’s about it.
   
   “Lounge is nice - food is nothing special at all. Virgin still kicks their ass on this front - in fact I think BA will lose a lot of business to Virgin b/c the setup here for a premium pax is stupid. . . . Regular lounges have same and more food than first. I don’t think it qualifies as a coffee house if you have automatic machines that make marginal cappuccinos. Champagne bars with only 2 champagnes would not last long. Oh - why can they do decent fresh oj on plane but [the] lounge has concentrate?”
   
   Something tells me this could be an issue of overpromising with the brand. What do I mean? If they’re going to call it a “champagne bar,” which they do, then it probably should have more than 2 types of champagne. If it’s just a lounge, then 2 champagnes are fine.
   
   The orange juice issue is the one that is most likely to get action. When I told that to John, he said, “I totally agree with him. We will take that comment and that will be sent to the people catering the lounges.”




6. Arrivals lounge - Once my friend returned, he sent me a follow up note about the arrivals experience. Though many of those gripes were probably just “teething problem,” I think his notes on the arrivals lounge were interesting.
   
   “Classic BA. Indifferent staff, no warm greetings and same crap food. You really think they could make something better on the ground than in an airplane. I especially like the “self service” luggage check. You present your bags, the counter clerk open the little gate and says “Yep. Take them back there”. Staffing levels clearly low. No one at the spa area or shower check in.”
   
   Sounds adequate but nothing more, in his eyes.

So that was about it. My friend summed it up after his trip by saying “Compared to [Virgin Atlantic], I would say BA completely lost the plot and missed a huge opportunity to create a great space for premium pax. Watch their load factors drop.” That’s certainly an unfortunate opinion and not one that will please BA. I know they were trying to do something amazing here.

So, for him it was clearly a disappointing experience, but one man does not represent everyone. Who else has an opinion of the Terminal 5 experience? Anyone else have a different view on things?

BA moved in to the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 at Heathrow today, and it didn’t take long for the baggage system to fail. Looks like they stopped accepting checked bags and won’t start again until Friday morning.

I guess they didn’t want to shock travelers by having a baggage system that actually worked right away. That would have been too big of a change from the previous setup, so they must be easing people into it. Hopefully that’ll happen soon, but if you can avoid checking bags for the next few days, do it.

There has been a ton of interesting news to write about in the last few days, and I’d been having trouble figuring out with what to lead . . . until yesterday. Turns out that I was voted one of the the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by The Observer in the UK.

Holy crap! That’s kind of scary. But, I’m guessing that means I’ll have a bunch of new visitors from that side of the Pond (welcome, everyone), so I’m going to post Sunday night instead of my usual Monday morning. And, while I’m being accommodating, let’s focus on something that probably causes you newbies pain and suffering more often than not: Heathrow.

Usually, any discussion of Heathrow involves a lot of cursing, rising blood pressure, and possibly some crying. With any luck, we’ll see less of that in the near future, but it’s likely to get worse in the short term. Why?

Well, we’re getting closer to the big terminal move. On March 27, BA will land its first flights at the brand-spanking new Terminal 5 and that begins a long period of transition for the airport as just about everyone save Virgin Atlantic moves locations.

I’ve tried to put together a handy guide on all the terminal moves so you can actually figure out where you’re supposed to go for your next flight. First, we’ll start with oneworld airlines, since they have the most changes happening the earliest.

Now let’s take a look at SkyTeam. In short, when Delta, Northwest, and Continental start flying to Heathrow in March, they’ll be in BA’s old Terminal 4. The rest of the carriers won’t move until early 2009, when a major terminal renovation will have been completed. Anyone who has flown BA out of that terminal lately knows that it is in desperate need of some help.

I’d like to list the Star Alliance changes here as well, but I haven’t been able to find them. In fact, while oneworld and SkyTeam have been on top of the changes, Star Alliance has been silent. I sent the alliance a request and their response left me wondering if they actually meant to insult my intelligence or if they just don’t speak English very well.

We would like to inform you, however, that the Star Alliance is a network of 19 individual airlines. Operational matters are handled by the airlines themselves. Therefore, for more information, you will need to contact the individual Star Alliance member airlines directly.

Really? You guys aren’t an airline yourself? No sh**. Well, I also asked United directly and spokesperson Robin Urbanski told me that the airline will be moving to Terminal 1, but it’s unclear when that might be and that will happen on June 1. Clearly, this alliance is a little less organized, probably because the changes aren’t coming as quickly as with the others.

We know that the airlines in Terminal 1 will stay there for now. Terminal 2 will be demolished starting this year, so those guys have to move somewhere. On March 27, BA moves nearly all of its domestic and European flights out of Terminal 1, so I have to assume that everyone from Terminal 2 will move in before their terminal disappears. Will the Terminal 3 airlines move at the same time or will they stay longer? My guess is that they won’t move immediately because there’s no urgency. Here’s how they stack up right now along with my best guesses as to where they’ll go. The only thing I know for sure is that US Airways will go to Terminal 1 when it starts service to the airport on March 30.

Update 3/25 @ 822a - Star has put out a press release with much more guidance. All Star carriers will be expected to move to Heathrow East in 2012 when the terminal is completed, but I haven’t included those changes in here.

Of course, not all airlines are in alliances. Virgin Atlantic, for example, will stay in Terminal 3, so you won’t see any changes there. All other unaligned airlines (except for former oneworld member Aer Lingus which will be in Terminal 3) will end up in Terminal 4. Again, I’m not entirely sure when that might happen, but one thing is clear . . . there will be a lot of confusion at Heathrow until things settle down, and that could take years.

If you have to go to the airport in the near future, leave plenty of time and bring lots of patience. If you have the misfortune of connecting through Heathrow, especially while these changes are in progress, may God have mercy on your souls.

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If you’re traveling through London/Heathrow today, you might want to call your airline and see if things are running on time. They haven’t exactly had the best of luck there these last couple of days.

See, yesterday a British Airways 777 landed on the grass before it got to the concrete, skidded, and ended up stopping right at the threshold to one of Heathrow’s two runways, as you can see below.

Everyone got off ok, and that’s pretty amazing. I spent the day yesterday going back and forth with a bunch of airline dork friends discussing what could have possibly caused this to happen. The weather was good and there weren’t any visibility issues, so that’s unlikely to have been the problem. There were reports that the engines failed, so what would have caused it? Did it run out of fuel? Maybe, though unlikely. It didn’t catch on fire, so that’s always possible.

I know, I should really keep out of this whole speculation game. Remember that potential “undular bore” that the Air Canada plane may have hit? Well, there are now reports that it could have been wake turbulence from a 747 passing in front of it. Not nearly as interesting, but certainly plausible. So, it makes me want to reserve judgment on this accident even though it’s so interesting.

The Daily Mail, however, has no problem speculating that it may have been a bird strike that shut down both engines simultaneously just a minute before landing. They have a bunch of incredible pictures and more details on the site. The odds of that seem so unbelievably small. It made me wonder which was more unlikely: that scenario or Randy Johnson hitting a bird over home plate with his fastball a few years back.

Well, it doesn’t matter. They’ll figure it out soon enough, I’m sure. It’s interesting to note that this is the first major accident I can think of involving a 777. That’s a very long and impressive safety record.

But back to my original point. That plane is still sitting at the threshold to the runway, so it may cause delays. Right now, I believe the runway is open to departing flights. (”And please don’t look to your right, ladies and gentlemen.”) Yesterday, when the runway was closed, most short haul flights were canceled or diverted so that long hauls could run. I imagine that the runway may need to close on and off for investigation and removal, so short haul flights may be affected again.

Instead of pointing you to the work of others today, I thought I’d get a real live guest poster to come to you. It’s all about service over here at The Cranky Flier. Today we have my friend and aviation-writer extraordinaire, Benét Wilson who will point you to some stories and blog posts they’ve been working on over at Aviation Daily. I’ve always told Benét that the only way I’d let her do a guest post was if pigs flew. Sure enough . . .

I’m Benét Wilson, airports/security editor for Aviation Daily, the empress of airports and the editrix of Aviation Week’s “Towers and Tarmacs” blog, a thoughtful, informative and fun look at your first stop as you access the global transportation system. And did I mention it’s on the free part of our web site? Cranky has foolishly allowed me to do the guest post on his blog today, since he’s away tending to other matters. I have to remember that Cranky has a real life outside of this blog.

Cranky and I had a chat about what I would write about, and I decided to do a week in review for airlines and airports. The week started with a black eye for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on its screening practices. First, a local Phoenix television station aired the now-infamous video footage of employees walking through checkpoints into the secure area of the airport. You can see my post on that here. And I’m not going to even get into the controversy over the “dry runs” (does anyone else squirm when they hear that term?) uncovered by NBC, which you can read about here.

Next, Virgin America’s ticket sale launch after jumping its final DOT hurdle for approval was hurt after its system was unable to handle the deluge of those wanting to buy tickets, including Cranky and my other airline geek friends who make a hobby of chasing first flights. Cranky did a great job with his review, and we covered this in a post on our “Things With Wings” blog. Don’t mind me – I’m just bitter that I couldn’t join the fun.

Remember when Seattle-Tacoma International Airport got worldwide coverage after it decided to take down its Christmas trees in order not to offend other religions? Well, the airport’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee recommended that airport decorations “should reflect the Pacific Northwest environment and its diverse community.” In English, that means no Christmas trees (thanks for the graphic, Cranky). No matter what the decision, the airport wasn’t going to win, and you can read my post on that here.

My colleague Lori Ranson, who writes about low-cost carriers (among other things) at Aviation Daily, did an interesting story on JetBlue’s plans to slow down its growth by cutting back on the new cities it will add and deferring aircraft deliveries. As always, I am obsessed with the airport angle, so I did a post here on how this move was not good news for the smaller- and medium-sized airports that are trying to get JetBlue and other low-cost carrier service to their communities.

Has anyone flown into or out of JFK Airport this summer? You have my deepest sympathies. Aviation Daily has been covering the deteriorating situation at that airport all summer on the delays and shut downs caused by weather, ATC, infrastructure issues and even birds. Yes, birds. My colleague Adrian Schofield did a post July 25 on how a birdstrike gummed up the works and led to multiple delays at JFK on a day that was looking to be delay-free.

And speaking of airport delays, even writing about the fuster cluck that London Heathrow has become is like clubbing a baby seal at this point. But I have anyway, in a post here because I am a glutton for punishment.

I could go on, but Cranky has only given me around 500 words, and you all have places to go, things to do and blogs to read. If you liked this post, come over and visit at the Towers and Tarmacs and Things With Wings blogs.

After heading east to check in on JFK and Dulles, I just couldn’t stop the momentum . . . so I kept going. Next stop, London/Heathrow airport. It’s easily one of the greatest places on earth for people watching, but it’s also probably the most confusing airport around, especially if you’re connecting between terminals. Here’s a satellite view (thanks, Google) with my own super cool, high-tech overlay showing you the terminal locations.

Now, before any of the really big things that I’m talking about can happen, monstrous T5 (orange) has to open. That’s scheduled for March of next year. This terminal will be British Airways’ pride and joy. They’ll have the entire place to themselves, though the easternmost concourse won’t open until 2010. Once this open next March, the entire airport shifts around and airlines get to line up by alliance.

T4 (green), where BA has most of their long haul flights today, will turn into the SkyTeam alliance terminals. That’s airlines like Air France/KLM, Korean Air, Aeroflot, and eventually Delta, Continental, and Northwest among others.

T3 (blue) will become the oneworld terminal. That is BA’s alliance, but only a couple of their flights will use that terminal, because even with T5 they still don’t have enough gates until 2010. Other than those oddballs, you’ll see American, JAL, Qantas, etc. Also, Virgin, which is unaligned, will keep its own little fortress in T3.

T2 (red) is the original Heathrow terminal, and it will be destroyed while T1 (yellow) will house the Star Alliance - bmi, Lufthansa, United, ANA, and the like. Both of those terminals, however, will make way for the brand-spanking new Heathrow East (in 2012). This mega terminal actually just received approval yesterday, and it’s going to be pretty big.

So with all these changes, Heathrow is primed for growth (finally), right? Survey says . . . bzzzzt. Wrong.

There are still only two runways on the property and that won’t change any time soon. (Thanks obnoxious anti-noise activists who moved to the area long after Heathrow was built.) So why are they building all this?

Well, right now, BA has flights in every single terminal at the airport, I believe. Though many believe it was designed that way just to piss you off, that is actually something they’d like to change. Even for London locals, it’s not fun having to look up where to go each time you fly. So that explains the need for T5. And once BA moves, it’s a mad scramble for the other airlines to get the space they want.

It really will make traveling through London better. Now if we can just get their insanely high taxation rate cut . . .

I had actually been working on this post about US and UK aviation relations and now it seems even more appropriate. As you may have heard, a tentative agreement allowing unlimited flights by US and EU carriers between the participating countries was agreed upon last week. There’s a good shot it won’t pass as all EU countries have to approve it.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are already balking about it and its primarily because they want to protect their Heathrow franchises. What do I mean by that?

If you’ve flown to London from the US, you’ve probably tried to fly into Heathrow because that’s considered to be the premier airport in the region. Considering that status, it’s somewhat surprising that American and United are the only US airlines and British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are the only UK airlines that actually fly there from the US.

The reasons for this go back to an agreement signed between the US and UK governments generally called Bermuda II. As you might imagine, this was signed in Bermuda in July of 1977. Amazingly it is still in force today.

Since Heathrow is the most desirable airport in London, it has the harshest restrictions. Only two US airlines and two UK airlines are allowed to fly between Heathrow and the US. For the US, American purchased TWA’s route rights while United bought Pan Am’s. In the UK, both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have the rights.

You might have noticed that Kuwait, Air India, and Air New Zealand fly between Heathrow and the US. Those three were grandfathered in since they have flown the routes for years before Bermuda II went into effect.

As if that’s not complicated enough, there’s more. Only two of the routes can have two airlines from each side. The rest of the routes can only have one from each side. Oh and did I mention that the US cities that can be flown to and from London are explicitly spelled out?

If you’d like to see an excellent synopsis of the agreement, look at this thread from airliners.net. If you prefer to torture yourself, you can read the entire text of the agreement in reply #6 on this thread.

So any attempt at open skies is bound to be fought by BA and Virgin Atlantic over in the UK because they have excellent positions in one of the world’s premier airports. It will be interesting to see if an open skies agreement can be pushed through even despite this opposition.

As the news coverage has died down here in the US, most people have probably forgotten about the plight of London-bound travelers. But last night as I sat in LAX’s Encounter restaurant (that big spider-looking thing), I saw Virgin’s 520p Heathrow departure head to the runway after its 850p departure, which itself was at least a half hour late.

That reminded me to look into this a little more today.

Sure ’nuff, things aren’t back to normal just yet, but they’re getting better. ATW Online tells us that yesterday, BA operated about 90% of flights from Heathrow. Today, they’ll operate their first full schedule of long haul flight since last week. There will only be a handful of short haul cancellations. Gatwick, meanwhile, should be up and running fairly well.

To put it in perspective, this BBC article notes that BA has cancelled 1,300 flights in the last week, 1,000 of those at Heathrow alone. And now there are over 20,000 bags that have been temporarily lost at Heathrow. That is a major inconvenience to put it mildly. As you can imagine, BA has requested to be paid for having to take such a hit to its operations. I wouldn’t be surprised to see other airlines follow suit.

If you’re waiting for your bag, keep waiting. That’s not going to be easy to clear that backlog.
If you’re flying out of Heathrow, continue to get there early. Your flights will go now, but you’ll still have a long wait ahead.