London Heathrow is the biggest airport in the UK, and it also handles more international passenger traffic than any other airport in the world. For this reason, expansion was planned and on 27th March a fifth terminal opened to help to cope with the many passengers that pass through the airport.
The new terminal has taken a long time to plan and build. The idea was first proposed back in the 1980s.
The opening of it has been talked about widely in the media in the UK and expectations were high for the ￡4.3 billion (60.2 billion RMB) project.
However, in spite of long preparations at Terminal 5 ahead of the grand opening, things soon descended into chaos.
There were problems from the outset as staff had difficulties finding car parking spaces and getting through security to get into the building. This consequently caused a delay when passengers started to arrive and adequate numbers of staff were not in place.
Long passenger queues formed and the slow start meant that everyone had to play catch-up from the beginning.
Staff were having problems using the new systems and a baggage handler told the BBC, it was all "a shambles the moment the doors opened".
The terminal has been designed to handle 12,000 bags an hour but due to a reported "lack of training and essential support that was promised", a backlog of luggage soon materialised.
By lunchtime on that first day, 20 flights had been cancelled to try and alleviate the problems. Flights continued to be cancelled in the days following the opening and up to 28,000 bags have now had to be placed in temporary storage.
BA, the only airline operating at Terminal 5 says it is working to clear the backlog, but the negative publicity caused by this fiasco has not helped the airport or the airline's reputation at all.
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