Terminal 5 IS working !! (BA Terminal 5)

Member Name: martyfarty69

Product:	BA Terminal 5
Date:	16/01/09 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very clean, very state of the art, and very BIG

Disadvantages: Very BIG !! a little too much of a "Shopping Mall" feel to it

19 Years in the Making and £4 Billion!! That is the story of London Heathrow's terminal 5, from its initial design to its opening.

So as someone who over the years has used Heathrow as my airport of choice for flying internationally I was quite looking forward to the prospect of flying out of there when I booked my Christmas vacation to England ( I now live overseas )

Terminal 5 is used exclusively by British Airways ( Naturally ) and is actually the largest free standing structure in the United Kingdom.

As with everyone else I watched on the news and read in the newspapers the horror stories that started to emerge on its very first day of operation, British Airways had to cancel 34 flights and suspend Baggage check in on that very first day after a catalogue of errors and over the next 10 days 28,000 bags failed to travel with their owners and they cancelled 500 Flights, so my interest was piqued and I did truly wonder if "Terminal 5 is working" as BAA had spent so much money advertising after the disastrous opening.

So me and my wife arrived about 2 and a half hours before our flight to Newark was scheduled to depart which gave us plenty of time to check in and explore the new facility, and chance for me to compare it to Terminal 4 which for the longest time was where I would fly in and out of the UK with BA, so after hearing that there were over 100 shops and restaurants including something that intrigued me, Gordon Ramsays Plane Food restaurant so we sat down the for Breakfast and even though it was £16.50 each for a "traditional" english breakfast the food was excellent, but I probably wouldn't do it again and would just rather spend a quarter of that somewhere else, walking through Terminal 5 you can't help but think that they have designed it with more of a retail experience in mind than a travel experience, i'm not sure if thats a good thing or not, Its nice to have choice and be able to spend your time while waiting for a flight doing more than just sitting around staring at the screens or occasionally wandering into WH Smiths ( Although there's nothing wrong with that ) but I couldn't help feeling that they have tried to cater to the American Crowd with the "Shopping Mall" feel to it.

But im being picky, really it was a pleasant Airport experience and one of my better ones, I would certainly fly in and out of there again and experienced none of the problems that were experienced by its early patrons.

Summary: Not a bad place to spend your time waiting to leave the country !! Or indeed enter it