HEATHROW AIRPORT is considering building a temporary terminal to cope with the additional volumes of passengers and bags during next year's London Olympics. Estimates suggest roughly 80 per cent of all Olympics passengers will travel through the gateway.
Heathrow Airport's operator BAA expects August 13, the day after the Olympics closing ceremony, to be its busiest next year.
On that day, the airport will need to be able to handle some 218,000 bags, 58,000 more than the previous day.
A new Olympic Terminal is one option for coping with the additional volume of luggage. This would be built specifically for the Olympics, and removed afterwards.
Other options include setting up a bag-drop facility at the Olympic village and shipping some baggage as freight. Embarrassingly for BAA, only part of Heathrow East - which will replace Terminals 1 and 2 - is expected to be open for business when competitors and delegates arrive for the 2012 games. The extent of the delay remains unclear, but it is understood that several major building contractors have indicated that work is now unlikely to start until next year.
Heathrow is also planning to recruit some 1,000 volunteers to help out at the airport over the Olympics.