Heathrow airport horrors: Thing of the past?

By Nelson Alcantara

The management of London's Heathrow airport, one of the world's busiest airports, is promising to implement measures to end the horrors it brings passengers.

LONDON (eTN) - The Departure Screen showed that the “Gate will open at 11:55am” but the time was already 12:10pm. Welcome to London’s Heathrow International Airport, so famously loathed for the horrors it gives travelers who use it the great misfortune of having to leave from its outnumbered gates. By last count, this London airport is well over its capacity of 45-50 million passengers to handling 67 million this year alone. An unbelievable figure considering the airport began as a tented village in 1946 serving 18 destinations with a handful of airlines making just 9,000 flights a year.

So, how is Heathrow airport's management responding? With action, says the airport’s managing body. Heathrow manager British Airport Authority (BAA) has promised to end the horrors of the airport. BAA strategy director Mike Forster said at the recently-held World Travel Market, “in the next six months, we are rolling out a complete revamp of our security product with new standards: 95 percent of the passengers cleared within five minutes; 99 percent within 15 minutes.”

This sounds like wishful thinking and, at best, an impossible undertaking given that it takes 20-25 to get to some of the airport’s gates. For instance, it takes 20 minutes of walking to get from the lounge to Gate 34.

How does BAA intend to deliver on its promise? According to Foster, BAA is bringing in 22 extra security lanes, have employed an extra 2000 guards across airports, 1400 at Heathrow, to make sure that “we can deliver 95 percent of passengers in five percent of the time.”

He added: “over the next six months to a year you will see every single security lane at Heathrow go through a revamp. We are bringing in new technology. We don’t think it has been good enough but you will see a difference.

“We run the security, but a lot of the activities at check in are run by the airlines themselves.”

By 2012, BAA is saying it hopes to have complete have the first phase of its renovation finish, just in time for the London Olympics. “The renovation program, according to BAA, will involve 54 airlines being moved from one terminal to another. Terminal 3 will have nearly US$2 billion spent on it over the next 10 years. There is planning permission to rebuild Terminal 2 with something at least as good as Terminal 5,” said Foster.

It has been reported that Heathrow airport could possibly get a third runway and a sixth terminal to help it cope with a surge in air travel, the government said on Thursday, despite fierce opposition from environmental campaigners.

Currently, Heathrow serves over 180 destinations in more than 90 countries and is the base for some ninety airlines.

Printable Version | published Nov 27, 2007

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