This is the news. Happy now?
This has nothing to do with the PC channel, but I had to get it off my chest.
Yesterday I went to Heathrow Terminal 5 to pick up my wife and kids, who had just spent 11 days in Bavaria – as you do.
Their flights were with BA and the new terminal was opened while they were away, so this was to be our first encounter with the much-maligned ‘national embarassment’.
Obviously we were all anxious, given the histrionic wailing of the press and the public self-flagellation of anyone with an interest in the project or in the global image of Britain, that it was all going to go Pete Tong, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
Access to T5 was great and the short stay car park is right next to the terminal. As a presumably temporary measure the first six hours of parking were offered for free.
Inside the building there was a tidy, airy, uncluttered simplicity that I frankly don’t expect of an English structure of any sort and certainly, utterly unlike any of the other Heathrow terminae.
The architectural style is that post-modern, industrial, warts-and-all style that reveals girders, air-conditioning ducts and mechanical innards for all to see. The feeling is not a million miles away from being a Lilliputian magically transported into a child prodigy’s deranged Meccano project, but a reasonably pleasant one nonetheless.
The waiting area has a nice lot of coffee places, juice bars and even a Krispy Kreme donut outlet for those frustrated by their trim physiques, flawless complexions and unencumbered arteries.
There are also a nice lot of well-designed information bays. There’s one for hotels and one for hire-cars which is entirely automated and offers a Doctor Who-like round table with innumerable keyboards, screens and telephones to help the disorientated traveller sort their lives out.
In short, everything was good.
The potential fly in the ointment was whether a) my family would arrive and, b) they would be accompanied by their luggage. In the event they emerged from ‘Arrivals’ around 50 minutes after they had landed, resplendent with a full complement of bags, travel cot, push chair, etc.
My better half reported the same positive aesthetic experience in the other half of the terminal as I had experienced and, aside from bemoaning the complexity of the journey from plane to worse-half, had no complaints whatsoever.
There’s no doubt that BA/BAA severely dropped the ball on the launch of T5. But if the UK’s mainstream media were to be believed – something I hesitate before doing as a matter of course – T5 represents a national humiliation on a scale to render Suez, the Millenium Dome and James Blunt into insignificance.
The truth is far from that, so don’t believe everything you read in the papers.
Related reading:
Heathrow's T5 opening hit with cancellations and delays
What happens when British Airways loses your luggage? Pretty much nothing...
