British Airways (BA) CEO Willie Walsh admitted during a grilling by a House of Commons Transport Committee on the Terminal 5 debacle that its final long-haul flights to Australia will not be moved from Terminal 4 until January or February 2009.
Eight long-haul destinations will be switched from T4 to T5 on 5 June however, including services to and from New York JFK.
Walsh also said that BA had not trained staff properly before the T5 move, and that he regretted not postponing the operation.
”If we were to do it again we would do things differently,” Walsh told MPs. ”We believed it was ready to open on 27 March [but] with the benefit of hindsight it”s clear that we had made some mistakes and in particular compromised on the testing regime.
”Clearly”I do [regret not postponing it] but I believe at the time that the move ” while it had risks, known risks ” would be successful.”
He said 23,205 bags had been ”mis-connected” in the first five days, and of those about 125 still have not been returned. A number of problems hit at the beginning of operations which ”cascaded through the day.”
Delays in completion of the physical building meant staff were not completely familiar with it said Walsh: ”To some degree we were showing them round a building that was different on day one and that was clear to me when I arrived at T5 on the morning of the 27th ” it was regrettable that they [did not] feel comfortable in that environment.”
BAA CEO Colin Matthews told the Committee some of the problems were the operator”s responsibility, and said he hoped ”to announce shortly when the remaining BA long-haul flights will transfer from T4.
”BAA regrets the postponement and its impact on other airlines ” however, we believe it”s in the interest of all airlines that we do all we can to avoid further disruption.”
Regarding baggage problems, he said: ”In the first three days it was very difficult to see the wood for the trees because of the scale of the disruption [which was] huge on the first day ” in my view there wasn”t one problem that caused that, it was the accumulation of a large number of relatively smaller things, each one of which on their own wouldn”t have caused that scale of difficulty.”
He admitted he was not aware the terminal was not ready before the opening, and said he has not yet investigated ”who knew what and when” regarding the problems.
The Committee said the organisation had ”made a fool out of this country by the opening of T5” and demanded a letter from Matthews once he has the information, saying it was ”extraordinary state of affairs” for the BAA CEO not to be aware whether discussions about postponing the move had taken place.
The CEO said that 17 lifts at the terminal are still not working, and by the end of the month four will not be operational.
BAA non executive chairman Sir Nigel Rudd said: ”[It was] clearly a huge embarrassment to the company and me personally and the board and nothing can take away that sense of failure. We”d all believed, genuinely, that this would be a great opening and it clearly wasn”t.”