Heathrow Terminal 5 woes

Hi there,

Is Terminal 5 still having teething problems?

BA is offering cheaper tickets, however, you apparently disembark at the dreaded new terminal. Or is it preferable pay more for Lufthansa flights where you are less likely to have baggage problems?

Has anyone been through the new terminal yet?

Have a good one ...

Travelled to UK on 12th and returned on 18th May with cheked-in luggage both ways. No problem at all. Found the sigs in Terminal 5 a bit user unfriendly but we figured it out! Were even able to check our luggage in an hour too early and they actually had someone at the Bag drop off counter (we had checked in online)

wd

Desperately seeking luggage from T5 Heathrow chaos.

Husband's boss went through there when the debacle began. Still waiting on the bags and now in discussion over amount of compensation he is entitled to.

Hubby and I went to London for the weekend in April and had no problems. Just had to wait a little while for our bags, and watch one of the BA baggage handlers throwing bags onto the conveyor belt (his supervisor heard us moaning about it, so I had a few words with him!!). When my hubby went to China in March, it took a week for his bag to get back, and it was delivered at 4am!!

Flew BA from Stuttgart to London April 19th and disembarked in Terminal 5. Changed terminals to 4 and had a 5 hr layover before flight to Chicago. Arrived in Chicago and waited nearly an hour for our luggage which never showed up. It was still in London! Got a voucher for $75 for the one bag we checked, but had to sign a release that we couldn't claim anything from travel insurance. They also gave us each a toiletry bag that had toothbrush and paste, razor, lotions, comb and BA t-shirts.

Since we flew on a Saturday and our bags were not going to our final destination, (we drove the rest of the way to our destination) our bag was shipped to us by Fed-X. It arrived by noon on Tuesday, 3 days later.

On the return flight, we disembarked in Terminal 4 and flew to Stuttgart through terminal 4. No lost luggage in that terminal.

My sympathies to everyone who has lost their luggage. What an absurd situation. Thanks for the information, it has definitely focussed my mind: Lufthansa it is.
Thanks again and cheers ...

We flew HAM => LHR & back early May with Lufthansa; no problems and all on time.

Lufthansa does not fly into Terminal 5. Terminal 5 is ONLY British Airways.

I flew BA to T5 recently and no problems at all. Think there is still a mess if you are changing flights to the other terminals as its still buses etc, but just to fly into T5 no problems at all now. Apparently early next week BA will annouce the rest of the schedule to moving ALL BA flights to T5.

They fixed all the problems a while ago, but decided now to take this slowly to ensure no further problems happened.

Has anyone had any experience with their disabled services? My Ma is flying in this Sunday and I don't want her to miss the connection to Munich due to long transfer routes and her dodgy knee.

Nope, but any flight in from the US with British Airways its probably Terminal 4 and most European BA flights now are Terminal 5, so its a messy bus ride between terminals.

Cool, thx. I have e-mailed her to request help, lessee if it works out.

My boyfriend and I had 8 flights between us through Terminal 5 in April and out of those 8 flights (within Europe and UK) only 2 were punctual. All the others were delayed between 1.5 and 3.5 hours. No problem with the luggage though.

I felt that BA handled these delays very poorly and did not make announcements on what was happening and didn't really properly apologise.

The terminal itself was fine though. Full of expensive shops which become increasinly uninteresting once you have been in them more than 3 times to pass the time.

I've flown via T5 four times in the last few weeks (back and forth to Stuttgart) and it's fine. It's big, clean, and because it's all BA, everyone seems happy and no one passes the buck. I brought my bicycle with me last time (from London to Stuttgart) and that arrived ok, in one piece, free of charge.

My bags didn't arrive though, but that's my fault. I was only allowed one checked-in bag and I had two bike panniers. So I stuck them both in a couple of bin liners ;) They must have ripped en-route as when the bags did arrive (by courier to the hotel the next day) they were separate with no bin liners in sight.

Note that they make everyone take their shoes off to go through the security screening so you have to walk around in socks, or bare foot, for a while along with everyone else.

Its treating everyone like cattle. Same in Zuruch. For old people (I'm getting on that way) no chairs & they expect you to hop on one leg whilst untying shoelaces.

They didn't in Terminal 2 for Lufthansa...

[quote name='adrianlondon' date='May 28 2008, 3:46 pm' post='1290527']
I brought my bicycle with me last time (from London to Stuttgart) and that arrived ok, in one piece, [b]free of charge.[/b]

BA has no charge on bicycles?

I want to take a bike with "Rücktrittbremse" to the UK - you can't get them there - and, apparently, it's illegal to use them in GB. I hesitated because I was convinced it would be too expensive. A van man I contacted said the transport would cost the tiny sum of EUR 250,00. The bike itself is over 10 years old and not worth even EUR 50,00, so I didn't take the offer.

Can you fill us out as regards this service?

Advance thanks and cheers.

Cannot blame BAA or terminal 5 for that though. I personally want to hire an arab to try and smuggle a bomb onto a plane in a bra, so that future security screenings at airports will mean topless ladies. Oh yes.

At Hamburg airport they have a much better solution - if the dont like the look of your shoes you are invited to place first one foot on a small plastic stool whilst they run their loop around it & then the other. No shoes off/on, no hopping around & no significant inconvenience...

With real airlines (not budget ones), sporting equipment is normally free.

Hmmm - would they transport my glider for me?

I've flown quite a few times to Heathrow T5 and never had any problems (other than the usual BA delays) but I've never taken checked in luggage either. It's actually really nice and best of all you don't have to get a stinking, cramped cattle bus to and from the plane like you do a Frankfurt ;-)

Tim.

Yes what you get instead if you arrive or leave from the B/C gates in the satellite T5 building is a cramped cattle shuttle train. So thats much better.

The stink will probably take a few years to develop.

I've been through about 5 or 6 times since it was built and the thing that gets me with T5 is that no matter what gate I arrive in it still seems like a half mile trek to get to immigration - you'd think they might have designed it such that it was easier to get there... Sure the departure gates are nearby (if you have an A gate), but arriving means a sturdy pair of shoes and a brisk pace.

Lemme get this straight, this is a glider plane? And you want to transport it on a plane?

..ha Beardie, you sure you're not thinking of the million mile walk to from gates D50 at Frankfurt T2 to the back of a mile long queue to show your passport at the hopelessly undermanned passport control followed by the Skyline to T1 ;-)

You're right though, having to take the transit thing at T5 is a pain but it isn't anywhere near as bad as those God awful buses to the planes, at least not when I took it.

Anyway, go through them often enough and you can learn to hate any airport ;-)!

Its a Sportgerät and to get it from here to South Africa...

Can picture the kids watching it being unloaded from a 747: Mummy, look - that plane is giving birth!!!

Why not just use the 747 as a tow plane That way you won't need to bring a launching system too..
And while your at it, see if you can get the flight at a severely reduced price, seeing as you won't even be in the plane.

I'm afraid that would slightly exceed VNE... Just by-the-way: one of the German National Gliding team is a LH captain on 747s...

I suppose you mean a she-arab? How would you get volunteers though? I mean, the guys are queueing up to blow themselves to bits in the name of jihad, coz they know they're gonna go to paradise and get 1000 virgins, but what do female terrorists get? A stud farm?

What seems to have escaped most people is that the requirement to take one's shoes off is in fact an excellent advertisement for British enterprise, as it demonstrates admirably our skill at tailoring the solution to the problem. We have a terrorist trying to ignite explosives in his shoes, what do we do? Of course - scan all shoes! If he had only been trying to ignite his left shoe, we could have adapted the solution by requiring all passengers to take off only their left shoes. If a flat-chested lady - or a transvestite - smuggles a bomb on to a plane in her/his bra, why then - and only then - will female or transvestite passengers (as the case may be) be required to disrobe at security. Rather than complaining, we should lay bare our sweaty socks with pride.

I don't get T5 - i mean, you have 50years experience of the paucity of Heathrow and then you go build a completely new terminal - and have all the crappy old problems still present.
Let me explain...

i) Scheduled flights means you sort of know when a plane will be expected at a gate... How come when you turn up (being generous - within 5 mins of eta) and the landing weenies are nowhere to be found
ii) you have a plane load of cargo (read baggage) which has to get back to the poor animals on the plane... why is it SO difficult to actually move metal containers from plane to terminal?
iii) why do the aforementioned human animals have to walk 5km to get back to an overcrowded passport checking zone - only to have to wait while some HO weenie assumes guilt until otherwise proven?
iv) why do you design a terminal with 3 'piers' that are 300m apart and build in a massively expensive driverless train system - but fail to connect the airport to the non-london bound railway system?
v) why do you have to spend hours 'shopping' when you actually just want to spend as little time in an airport terminal as possible?
vi) who really wants Dior, Chanel, McD's, F Word Man etc when you just want to get to whereever it is you're going?

I for one love T1 at Munch - you can park o/s to drop someone off without the risk of your car being suspected of carrying a bomb, you can leave it there for a while without fearing a clamp after 30secs, you arrive by public transport and you're through security in 10mins and the only issue is the impossibility of BA actually meeting their timetable...

Maybe the plan is to raise T1,2 & 3 to the ground and build a meaningful sensible terminal that allows people to get in/through/out as quickly and painlessly as possible...??
and england will win Euro2008...not!

...that's what happens when you allow a company to take over who have borrowed massively to do so and have to spend most of their profits on interest payments and have nothing left to invest.

And of course the other thing about UK airports...

Dont mention the number of the gate on your ticket or indeed on any boards until the last minute. That we we keep you in the "shopping experience zone" and maximise our possible profits. Frankly I'd rather find out the gate meander down in my own time and settle nearby with a paper or a book...

At least in Stuttgart you know the gate well in advance (its on the ticket at check-in, even online check-in tickets have it) and I can do just that.

Of course now I do LHR-STR fairly regularly and T5 has settled down I know the gates, but for one-off trips its a pain.

(I'm with mj_davey on this - does anyone actually buy anything in the Dixons - I priced a few things there like memory cards and a few other bits and bobs - everything can be sourced much cheaper online and in the case of memory cards you can get them for a fraction of the cost...)

I bought a Canon dSLR (40D with 17-85mm lens) kit from Dixons at the airport; it was the cheapest way. You can check prices here www.dixonstaxfree.co.uk and do advanced research. I still got the Canon cashback on the camera stuff too, because it's not actually "tax free"; it's a tax dodge given to BAA or whoever where you get a 17.5% discount ;)

Also ... the bicycle on BA thing. Yep, it's free. I don't know what a Rücktrittbremse is, but assuming it's not some sort of bicycle-riding trained monkey surgically atatched to the bike, it'll be fine.

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/bagsport/public/en_gb

My bike was just ridden to the airport (ok, ridden to Paddington and taken on Heathrow Express) and all I did was loosen the handlebars and turn them through 90 degrees, then remove the pedals. I also let some air pressure out of the tyres, but I'm not sure if that's really necessary. I don't know what a depressurised cargo hold would do to fully pumped up tyres. Probably nothing.

Note that the tools you'll need to do the above would probably make you look dodgy at the xray machine, so you'll need to check them in.

I am so with you on this. I thought they did it because of incompetence, but now you mention it, of course its money gouging.

..it's exactly the same at Frankfurt, no gate on the screen until the last minute (at least for BA flights), although curiously it is on the boarding pass that was printed hours before. It can't be for commercial reasons at FFM because there's bugger all airside at T2. Incompetence is more likely. Personally I quite like having the shops to look round, even if they are, by and large, a rip off. At least you can buy a book or a paper or something.

However, the screens not showing any information about your flight being delayed, despite the fact that there's no plane at the gate 10 minutes before you're due to leave is deliberate apparently. I complained to a BA rep at FFM a little while back and she whispered conspirationally that they were told not to put the information up, unfortunately I didn't catch why!

Still, I could always fly Lufthansa but then I'd have to pay more and there's the double security check at T1 - don't get me started on that!!!

Anyway, in answer to the OPs question, I think T5 is pretty good!

Tim.

OK maybe for the larger items but definitely memory cards are a rip off...

http://www.dixonstaxfree.co.uk/index.cfm?f...;pro_id=7000487
25.52

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quick...NavigationKey=0
10.49

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/80402
8.79

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SANDISK-1GB-ULTRA-...9555&sr=8-3
3 pounds or less (though extortionate postage no doubt).

Yeah, they tried to sell me a memory card at the time, but I refused. Their prices are crazy. But then I also checked in Saturn, and they're crazy too ;) To be honest, I was shocked that Dixons at the airport was a good price for the camera.

Memory cards need to be bought online; play.com and 7dayshop.com both have good prices.

"I don't know what a Rücktrittbremse is"

Rücktrittbremsen is that lovely invention where you cycle along happily, absent-mindedly pedal backwards as you go down a slope, and fall off because you have just activated the pedal brakes. I used to take eldest daughter to kindergarten on the bike, but we had so many near misses that I eventually just pushed her there on the bike, and cycled home. Falling off is easier when you are the only one on the bike. Cannot imagine why anyone would prefer that.

Not always. I took my snowboard with me on LH in January and they let it on for free, along with another 6 kg of luggage over the limit. When I took my snowboard back last week with LH, they charged me €20. It depends on how full the flight is and what mood the check-in staff are in.

I went through T5 with BA on the way back to Munich, and I had no problems at all. My only complaints (I'm British so it's in my nature to complain) were that T5 had a true shopping centre feel to it. Also everyone seemed to use the bag drop off points to the left of the terminal where people mainly enter the terminal (area B I think) even though 2 or 3 other sets of drop off points were open with staff waiting for someone to come along. I guess the staff could have told people to have gone to the other desks, but this I'd really just be picking holes there and be trying to find someone to blame, plus I assumed that all desks would be like that myself when I was in the queue .

Rücktrittbremse - "... Cannot imagine why anyone would prefer that."

My Thumbs don't work properly.

I prefer the Rücktrittbremse, but I never had a bike without one so it would never occur to me to cycle backwards down a hill.