T5 - Kermit cringes...

Denver International step aside, the crown for worst opening has passed 12+ years on to Heathrow's Terminal Five and this green guy is either rolling in his grave or laughing his tail off. He was most proud of the number five in his happy song.

BA Chairman Willie Walsh probably never wants to hear that number again.

Terminal Five has been in the news these last two weeks for everything but the pre-advertised technological wonder it was supposed to be. Much like Denver it was hoisted on its own poor planning petard. What is shocking is no one saw this coming.

I had a flight scheduled from Heathrow 31 March and when I saw T5 was opening moved my departure to Bristol because of Denver memories. No matter how well trained you think your people are, no one is prepared to shift 100,000 passengers and staff from one building to another overnight flawlessly. When we moved 700 people in Charlotte NC from one office tower to another, it took two weeks to get everything sorted. So how did BA expect to have a flawless transition to a building no one knew their way around?

The complaints are even more remarkable, no training for baggage handlers, no late night sessions and trial runs to ensure efficiency, silly limited compensation letters for disrupted travellers to add flame to kerosene. It just got worse and worse by the minute.

Several hundred flights were cancelled during the opening and 19,000 bags went astray, none more telling than Snooker player Jackie Bachmann's £700 snooker cue needed for a competition that evening in Scotland.

I can remember working the neighouring ticket counter in Boston in 1976 when a young rising musician by the name of James Taylor lost his $3,000 guitar. The reaction of the then BA station manager was a sarcastic, "whose banjo did we lose?" as the classic guitar sat in Singapore with him there in Boston for a concert. Corporate arrogance has long been a cancer within BA.

The problem is with 24/7 news everywhere, it's harder to hide when things do go wrong. But hey, everyone's bag got a holiday to Milan where baggage handlers and FedEx work night and day to unite passengers with their lost bags. Why Milan? Because they have a semi-permanent operation already in place there from previous difficulties over the Christmas holidays.

Sing-a-long with Kermit... "Oh 5 is such a pretty number..."