News that London Heathrow has secured permission to redevelop Terminals 1 and 2 in a ”1.5bn ($1.97bn) refurbishment drive, will come as welcome relief to those who have had to plough through its interminable infrastructure for so long.
Major building work will see T1 and T2 disappear to form Heathrow East at the UK”s premier gateway, with the first phase expected to be ready in time for the 2012 Olympics in London. The upgrade will also apply to BAA”s other terminals of 3 and 4, with the forecourt reconstruction work that has made arriving at the former so congested, slated to be completed by the end of this year.
The Olympics appears to have galvanised London into a frenzy of upgrades, although why it has to take a two-week sporting extravaganza to provide the catalyst, is anyone”s guess. If it”s worth doing with the Olympics, why wasn”t it worth doing on its own merit?
A total of ”6.5bn is to be lavished on the ten-year Heathrow project, that will also of course see the long-awaited T5 open in March, 2008, while ”1bn has been earmarked for T3 during a ten year improvement.
Ten years? T3 has surely to be one of the worst airport experiences anywhere in the world today. Quite apart from slogging round the external construction work, the low-ceilinged departure area, with its gloomy, grey aspect and poor lighting, is only the beginning as the passenger endures endless security queues, including a separate one for shoes, before emerging, blinking, into what is loosely described as the departure lounge.
A cathedral to mammon more like. Before reaching the seating area, passengers are channelled through endless shops, all fiercely lit, before even reaching the massively over-crowded central area that possesses almost zero natural light and is a raging cacophony of noise and claustrophobic to boot. Anyone of a nervous flying disposition is hardly going to feel relaxed here.
But BAA may be about to address all that, although ten years sounds an awfully long time, despite the UK”s legendary reputation for endless planning public enquiries. Maybe T5 will be a model terminal, in bright, airy surroundings, where the needs of airlines and passengers come before those in the retail business, but BAA could do worse than take a look across the Channel at Charles de Gaulle”s Terminal 2F.
Conceived as a vast concrete and glass project, it is both architecturally inspiring ” forming the setting for a U2 video for example ” and super-friendly to passengers ” while retaining a minimal but classy shopping experience.
Clearly, retailers have a crucial role to play in subsidising airport operator charges, but maybe BAA needs to address better the balance of passenger experience versus bottom line contribution.
It is fair to say that Heathrow is encumbered by what has always proved a critical headache: space. CDG has quite literally, acres of it, set to the north east of Paris, while LHR is struggling mightily to even convince politicians that it needs a short third runway to enable it to compete with the likes of Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Willie Walsh must cast envious eyes at his Paris neighbour, with the dominant carrier, Air France, able to use four runways to lever maximum potential and its SkyTeam partner, Delta, capable of the same from its Atlanta hub.
So there are two issues generally around the world ” one of airport infrastructure ” the current proving trials of the A380 are challenging those needs ” and the other of runway access ” the latter complete with a host of political, environmental and strategic, i.e. alliance, implications. And airports generally struggle to address both issues at the same time.
Apart from one. Seven hours flying time from London there is a project growing in the desert, so massive, so mind-boggling in its conception that it is hard to picture. And yet Dubai World Central International Airport is happening before our eyes, a testament to that Emirate”s extraordinary success story as it capitalises on its reputation as the Monte Carlo of the Middle East and compensates for a gradual winding down of oil revenue.
Where do you start? Six parallel runways of 4.5km each, a combined capacity of Heathrow and Chicago airports, a $33bn investment, the world”s largest cargo hub capable of handling 12m tonnes per year, an Emirates-dedicated terminal, plus two others including a specific building for low cost airlines and you have possibly the world”s most complete airport experience. And if its current sister airport is anything to go by, probably one of the world”s most sophisticated and dynamic duty free/travel retail environments.
It”s unfair perhaps to compare Europe with Dubai ” Dubai has relatively few problems with planning, it has enormous space and crucially, a political regime that believes 100% in aviation as a tool that will piledrive its economy forward once the black gold runs out.
But BAA is sitting on a goldmine too at Heathrow. Situated at the crossroads of Atlantic traffic, it is ideally positioned to capture point to point and hub business. Now that BA and Virgin have belatedly embraced the Open Skies concept, the potential can only become greater ” coupled with the infrastructure pressure. The redevelopment news about Heathrow is welcome ” and overdue ” now the real debate can equally begin about how best to maximise the new business opportunities ” and bring the public and politicians along with them.
Simon Warburton
Editor