Spreading wings

Bungled transfers, lost baggage ... Heathrow Terminal 5's launch was undeniably rocky, says Jonathan Hart, but look beyond the hype and a different story begins to emerge

Embarrassing, you may think, for an industry that specialises in the sector, just how many product launches appear to misfire.

A result of style over substance?
Promise over practicality?
Carelessness over competence?

But let's not go there. Let's merely accept that no launch plan is fail-safe and that to have teething problems - and admit to them - is only human.

In this respect, and valid excuse or not, the so-called 'soft' opening of a new hotel at least alerts guests to the initial shortcomings and potential inconveniences caused by a work that's presented as finished but still in progress. Yet, by and large, new airports or terminals don't employ the same tactics or, however obvious to passengers, enjoy the same implicit understanding. For a raft of very public and expensive reasons, they are expected to run like clockwork from day one.

They rarely do, of course, and for an exception to a general rule you probably need to go as far back as the mid-1970s and the switch from Paris Orly to Charles de Gaulle to pinpoint a major hub airport project that went without an inaugural hitch.

More recently, for example, the giant new terminals at both Hong Kong and Bangkok, despite similar grandiose promises and lengthy trials involving casts of thousands, experienced similar disastrous opening days to Heathrow's Terminal 5 in late March 2008, accompanied by the same glare of publicity over lost baggage and faulty systems - if not the sustained public outcry and mood of disdain.

Hardly surprising. As inaugural cock-ups go, T5's was spectacular in comparison to its Far Eastern counterparts. As tempers flared and the lost baggage mountain grew, with airport and airline staff running around like headless chickens, the catastrophe was exacerbated by the general chaos, overcrowding, accusatory finger pointing, inbred protectionism and jobsworth belligerence that have become part and parcel of its location at a premier global airport under both siege and public scrutiny.

That T5 was so heavily pilloried perhaps stemmed as much from being the equivalent of a shiny new pin in a sack of rusty nails as from its initially faulty systems and mismanaged transfer of flights. It was seen as a purpose-built adjunct to the confusion at an otherwise outdated, piecemeal shambles, one labelled by frequent travellers, as well as the great and good of aviation, as a national disgrace.

But that was over six months ago - what's been happening since?

Not that you'd probably have noticed from a still-edgy general media, but T5 actually managed to iron out the worst of its teething problems within days, or weeks at most. At the same time, over the summer and early autumn, occupant British Airways has gradually been transferring flights from other terminals in three tranches and without apparent further hitch, claiming trouble-free systems and minimal disruption to passengers. By the end of October, an optimum 90 per cent of BA's flights, or as many as will comfortably fit, were scheduled to operate from T5 (see 'Who goes where?', right).

"Clearly we bit off more than we could chew in trying to move over in one go and, in hindsight, should have phased the transfer from the outset," admits the airline's commercial director Robert Boyle. "A bad mistake, given the somewhat complicated nature of relationships at Heathrow, but the original intent was to minimise passenger confusion about which flight operates from which terminal."

As the man in charge of overseeing the delayed transfer to T5, Boyle is adamant that all is now running smoothly, with internal systems, including baggage retrieval and delivery performance, ahead of expectations and better than at other terminals as well as at any principal hub airport in Europe.

In tandem, he has also been on a mission to win over the hearts and minds of any remaining doubters or critics of the £4.3 billion T5, into which the airline has ploughed £330 million in hardware, chiefly in the creation of a series of six world class lounges in three separate complexes.

Boyle says the carrier has spent an additional £60 million since March in smoothing out problems and attempting to correct T5's tarnished image, including a series of overnight print and email advertisements recording the terminal's previous day punctuality performance with comments from passengers.

"The argument was made that [with the ads] we shouldn't be reminding people of the opening," says Boyle. "But the fact is, due to the sheer scale of negative publicity, that T5 is still perceived by some as somewhere to be avoided. Not by frequent travellers who use it regularly and appreciate its benefits but by infrequent travellers or first-time users.

"We lost no corporate accounts as a result of the bad start but we did initially lose a number of our regular business customers who showed their displeasure by gravitating elsewhere. Fortunately, we have won most back but we still have a job to do in convincing everybody."

Frequent flyer feedback, in particular, has been taken very seriously, adds Boyle. "For example, we have installed a dedicated Club World check-in desk in response to requests, although the terminal is specifically designed to minimise queuing through self-service check-in and rapid baggage drop."

An added task for Boyle has been to clear the air with passengers and other airlines over the congestion, chaos and delays that have afflicted the rest of an airport in the throes of attempted regeneration.

"The delays in our move to T5 have obviously had a knock-on effect for other carriers at Heathrow," he says. "At the same time, though, our move is freeing up considerable capacity leading to performance improvements at other terminals."

He adds that a major positive to emerge from the upsets has been an improvement in formerly frosty (at best) relations between BA and the airports authority BAA, either from the shock of T5's disastrous opening or BAA's subsequent change in leadership.

"The mood is now far more constructive with an understanding that if we don't work together to get it right for the customer, neither of us wins," says Boyle. "Frankly, I'd also support that in terms of other airlines. While it's nice to have the best terminal and the competitive advantages that brings, the reality is the reputation of Heathrow generally is important for us. It follows that we are a big supporter of helping to upgrade the rest of the terminals to world class standard."