Hurray: JetBlue gets its new terminal

Today, JetBlue welcomed its new home at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport. The airline moved from the old Terminal 6 to the new $743 million Terminal ($663 of which is covered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey), Terminal 5.  The first flight into the terminal arrived at 5:05 am [...]

Read Full Post »

Naomi Charged on the Terminal 5 incident

Naomi Cambell has been charged on the incidence assaulting two police officers during a luggage incidence at Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow Airport. The incidence happened during the infamous chaotic opening week of Terminal 5.
From Associated Press –
“The Crown Prosecution Service said Campbell faced six charges — three
counts of assaulting a constable, two counts [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5 Update: Heathrow’s Managing Director Quits!

Terminal 5 has taken new victim or should I say guilty as charged. Mark Butler, Managing Director of London’s Heathrow Airport, has resigned from the position at BAA. He is supposed to have left due to “change to management roles” after the introduction of new group chief executive Colin Matthews.
Mark Bullock was charged with “the [...]

Read Full Post »

Heathrow Airport: UK’s dump?

Events in order -

Terminal 5 Opening day (/week/month) Chaos with bags misplaced/mislaid, passengers mis-connected and a lot of delays. Since January 2008, BA has mislaid 28.9 bags per 1,000 passengers.
American Airlines’ Head of Customer Services (Europe) Don Langford slamming the airport as “bit of a dump” and “worst among major European hubs”

Now it is British [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5: My Story

Finally, I made it to the famous (read notorious) Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow Airport.
Entrance to the Terminal – If you are transiting, you take the Heathrow Express (from Terminal 1,2,3). Once you arrive to the terminal, you can take the big elevators to the Ticketing Level. The ticketing has alphabetical zones from A [...]

Read Full Post »

BAA: Breaking up?

BAA (British Airport Authority Ltd), the owner and operator of seven British Airports (2nd largest transport company in the world), is preparing the divest some of its airport. On April 22nd, the competition commission started an investigation to see if the airlines and passengers are being served well. Commission said that “BAA had been slow [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5: The problems were known before opening day

During a March 8th dry run for testing the new facility, out of 100 transfer passengers (using volunteers who acted as transfer passengers) only 2 made their connecting flights. That is a 98% fail rate, so using a scale if there were 10,000 connecting passengers 9800 would miss their connections!Airport Staff IssuesStaff had parking and [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5 Update: British Airways ousts two for the fiasco

It is about time that some accountability is assigned for the fiasco. The Terminal 5 fiasco is supposed to cost British Airways around $8+ billion. Two senior managers – Gareth Kirkwood (Director of Operations who handled logistics of transfer to Terminal 5) and David Noyes (Director of Customer Service who supervised staff training), have been [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5: Finally some good news

British Airways has announced that it will delay the shift of its long haul flights (and other flights from Terminal 4) to Heathrow’s Terminal 5. BA will postpone the move from April 30th 2008 to June 5th at the earliest.
Though this delay will cause problems to other airlines’ plans (taking BA’s place at Terminal [...]

Read Full Post »

Terminal 5: Looking Back

Problem Summary from here -

Parking – Road signs misleading, problems paying and exiting
Check in – Not open till 4am on start day
Baggage – The crux of the problem. Understaffed or belt system jam, planes left without bags, and suddenly there were thousands of misplaced bags! Famous stories around it – Naomi Campbell, DJ Harris and [...]

Read Full Post »