British Airways publicly apologised yesterday for the chaos at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5.

The airline's chief executive Willie Walsh was appearing in front of the Government's Transport Select Committee, and said that the opening of the £4.3 billion flagship facility - which was marred by problems with the facility's baggage system and extensive flight cancellations and delays - had been a "disaster" and a "national embarrassment".

Also appearing before the Committee of MPs in the House of Commons were two representatives from Heathrow's operator the British Airports Authority (BAA) - Sir Nigel Rudd, the company's chairman, and Colin Matthews, the chief executive of Heathrow.

The hearing, called to ask investigate why T5's opening descended into chaos with over 430 flights cancelled and 20,000 passenger bags lost, saw Walsh, Rudd and Matthews provide a number of interesting and revealing answers about the shambolic opening few weeks of operation.

Walsh admitted that BA opened the terminal knowing there would be problems, because of issues regarding staff familiarisation with the baggage system, while BAA's Rudd and Matthews admitted that there were areas of T5 which were not ready.

Heathrow Airport T5 Baggage System 'Not Ready'

The first major point to be thrown up when MPs questioned the three executives was that T5's baggage system - lauded before the terminal's opening as being one of the most sophisticated baggage distribution systems ever installed at an airport - was not sufficiently ready in time for when the terminal opened on 27th March.

Walsh admitted the airline had "compromised on the [baggage system's] testing regime", and also failed to sufficiently complete the programme training BA baggage handlers to work the baggage system. He admitted: "We didn't supply staff with sufficient training and familiarisation". He said only 80% of staff at T5 on the opening day were sufficiently trained.

The BA chief executive also admitted to the Transport Committee that the airline had considered delaying the T5 opening in order to solve the problems, but decided against it. He said: "We believed that, while there were known risks, the opening would be successful. If we did it again, we would do things differently".

BAA also admitted they knew there were issues with T5 that would lead to problems when the terminal was opened.

The company's chairman Rudd said: "My view of the matter was that there were a number of problems that might have been foreseen but none that would have led to a postponement of the terminal".

Rudd added that BAA was "bitterly disappointed" with the T5 opening. He said: "It is clearly a huge embarrassment to the company, me personally and the board. Nothing can take away that failure. We all believed genuinely that it would be a great opening, which clearly it wasn't".

BA Boss Appears to Criticise BAA

An interesting aspect to the Transport Committee hearing was an implied critcism of the airport operator from BA boss Willie Walsh.

Walsh appeared to claim that construction work on T5 - which was the responsibility of BAA - contributed to the problems with the terminal. He said: ""The environment was a building which was not fully complete" and that "delays in the building of the terminal...did impact on the T5 opening".

For their part, BAA acknowledged that "with the benefit of hindsight, there were aspects [of T5] that were not ready". Heathrow chief executive Matthews admitted: "Some of the problems were undoubtedly our fault".

When asked by the Committee if BAA had launched an internal inquiry into the problems seen at T5, Matthews said that BAA had not yet investigated "who knew what or when" in advance about the likely difficulties T5 could face because of the baggage system problems.

This led to some Committee members accusing BAA of "incompetence" and complacency, with one member saying that Rudd and Matthews were "poorly prepared" for the hearing.

Matthews defended the decision not to launch an internal review, saying that the company had decided to focus efforts on getting T5 to work efficiently and effectively for its users. Rudd said BAA would launch an internal review in the next few weeks.

Source - Airport International's London Reporter

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