BAA braced for 'robust' criticism over T5 fiasco

THE opening of Heathrow's Terminal5 will be condemned by MPs as a shambles on Monday when they publish their official report on what went wrong.

They will highlight the lack of preparation by airport owner BAA and by BA, the sole user of the £4.3billion terminal.

Airport chiefs say they expect to be criticised in the report but insist that the problems have been ironed out since T5 opened on 27 March and the terminal is now operating at near-full capacity.

Members of the all-party Commons Transport Committee have conducted an in-depth investigation into the disastrous opening, which received world-wide coverage. Hundreds of flights were cancelled because of computer failures and tens of thousands of bags went missing as luggage conveyor belts repeatedly broke down. Many lifts and some escalators also failed to work and a number of security staff were locked out because they had the wrong passes.

MPs who visited T5 during their investigation were amazed that training for ground staff on new systems was so poor, and in some cases non-existent.

Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers, who is not a member of the committee and has not seen the report, said she would be "staggered" if the airport operator and BA were not criticised "most robustly". She added: "It is very important the report addresses what steps BAA and BA have taken to remedy the problems so we get much better quality of service."

Ms Villiers said that as MPs on the committee interviewed those involved in the opening including BA chief executive Willie Walsh it had been "basically obvious they were not happy with events".

BA says that the situation at T5 has improved dramatically, and on Tuesday 14 October it had 98 per cent punctuality among short-haul flights, the highest figure since the UK's largest carrier began compiling records 23 years ago.

A spokesman for the airline said: "T5 has looked after almost 12 million passengers and handled more than 80,000 flights through the difficulties. It is proving to be a huge success with our customers and continues to work extremely well.

"We do a monthly customer survey and in August and then again in September we achieved our best ever customer satisfaction scores."

He added: "There was no disruption at all during the peak flying weeks of the summer."

A spokesman for BAA said that the terminal was now operating "more or less at full capacity" and baggage handling was outperforming targets.

He added: "We expect to be blamed [in the report]. The opening did not go well. We think that T5 is now a world-class terminal."