Problems experienced at the opening ofHeathrow's Terminal 5, which led to
hundreds of cancelled flights and thousands of passengers losing
theirluggage, "could and should" have been avoided, MPs said
today.
Most of the issues were caused by
poor system testing, poor communication between British Airways
and airport operator BAA, and poor staff training, according to a
report published by the Transport Select Committee today.
Terminal 5 opened on 27 March this year, and immediately ran
into problems, with 23,000 bags ending up misplaced and over 500
flights cancelled.
IT glitches played a central role in causing some of the
troubles.
Software filters installed during testing were accidentally left
in place after the systems went live. Their job was to prevent the
specimen messages generated during testing being sent to live
systems elsewhere in Heathrow.
But once the
Terminal 5 system went live, the filters meant Terminal 5 did
not receive messages about bags transferring from other airlines.
These bags were automatically sent for manual sorting.
British Airways held a number of trials before the terminal
opened, but the MPs said they were not enough to make sure the
baggage system could cope. "They failed in the ultimate objective
of getting the system to a point where it worked well enough to
cope with the opening successfully. The chaotic scenes of late
March and early April could, and should have been avoided through
better preparation."
Since the opening, BAA and BA have instigated a daily Terminal 5
operations meeting to review each day's performance, and a weekly
joint meeting to review the baggage system's performance.
The MPs criticised BAA executives for being "unhelpful". Their
report said, "We were concerned that during our first evidence
session, representatives from BAA were unhelpful and ill-prepared.
They provided us with no satisfactory explanation as to how this
national embarrassment had been allowed to unfold."
BAA said two of the lessons it learnt as a result of Terminal
5's opening were to refine the parameters for live monitoring of
baggage performance, and to ensure a direct link between the BAA
and BA baggage and logistics teams.