By Tim Ferguson, 27 March 2008 18:01
NEWS
On opening day of Heathrow's £4.3bn Terminal 5 (T5), passengers have been hit by delays and flight cancellations as a result of problems with the new high-tech baggage system.
On Thursday evening the problems with the baggage system led to all luggage check-in at the new terminal being suspended.
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British Airways (BA) - the sole airline using T5 - had to cancel 33 flights (departing and arriving) before 14:00(GMT) due to the baggage system problems, although the majority of delayed passengers were moved onto later flights.
Reports said some passengers had to wait up to two-and-a-half hours after their flight had landed before getting their luggage back.
Heathrow owner and operator, BAA, said the issue was "quickly rectified" with the baggage system now fully operational.
A BAA statement said: "Early this morning there was a minor problem with log-ons of the baggage system which affected the baggage on some outgoing flights."
BA added there were a "few minor problems" with the first day of operation at T5 including "baggage performance issues".
The airline attributed the problems to car parking, delays in staff security screening and staff familiarisation with the terminal.
A BA statement said: "This is not unexpected following one of the most complex and largest airport moves in history."
BA added the issues have now been resolved and apologised to passengers for any inconvenience caused.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Quote - "A BA statement said: "This is not unexpected following one of the most complex and largest airport moves in history."
Maybe they should have had a gradual phased in cut over instead of an overnight 'Big Bang'.
Did they not study the problems encountered at Denver and Hong Kong new airport and learn the 'lessons to be learned' from the Post Project Review.
2. anonymous
On the bright side, thanks to passengers refusing to be finger printed, problems with the "high-tec" computer security systems failing were avoided and as a result planes managed to leave the airport with passengers onboard.
3. Chris Smithers
Before St Pancras International rail station was opened for services, three or four days were devoted to testing all the systems and processes, using an army of thousands of volunteer 'passengers'. This allowed the staff to familiarise themselves with the systems and get actual hands-on experience before the station was opened to Eurostar traffic. Lessons were learnt and adjustments made before exposing paying customers to the St. Pancras experience. The result was that everything went without a hitch on the first day of international service. I'm surprised BAA didn't take a leaf out of the rail industry's book.
4. John Rutter
A hopeful spokesperson said: BA added the issues have now been resolved
But of course that is not the case. Witness today's news articles.
Just like massive software projects, hardware and infrastructure changes of this sort are always going to be problematic. You would have thought a phased-in launch would be more sensible...
5. Jagan Vaman
The Heathrow Terminal incidence is a clear case of Implementing a enterprise wide solution without simulation and testing.
Global methodologies such as ITIL and CoBIT are available for a systematic implementation of such systems in a zero tolerance level.
I hope they have a good BCP and Disater Management system failing which this will repeat.
6. Radical Meldrew
Yet another high-tec cock up - it makes me proud to be British because that's what we do best!
7. anonymous
The fact is the managers "manage" whatever it is they think they're meant to manage, which is worlds away from what they should be doing; if they'd just listened to those at the sharp end none of this pathetic mess would have occurred.
8. anonymous
An optimistic BA spokesman thought problems were sorted out late Thursday. It's now late Saturday & there's still problems, cancelled flights, missing baggage etc.
One bright spot - the data commissioner told BAA exactly what they could do with their fingerprinting plans.