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British Airways passengers who travel from Bahrain have been spared the Terminal 5 experience after the airline postponed the full transfer to its new London-Heathrow home by at least a month.
BA admitted it cannot cope with a normal schedule at T5 as it announced a delay in transferring its long-haul services from April 30 until June at the earliest. The move caught out thousands of passengers booked on connecting flights to T5 over the next month, some of whom could be in danger of missing their onward trips because they will have to pass through Terminal 4 instead.
BA chief executive, Willie Walsh, admitted that sticking to the original deadline would present an 'unnecessary risk' after the blighted T5 opening, which led to more than 500 cancelled flights due to a chaotic baggage handling operation.
The airline and Heathrow owner, BAA, are still struggling with glitches in the luggage system and ongoing problems with the £4.3 billion building. BA is supposed to handle more than two million passengers a month at T5, but for now around half its passengers will stay at T4.
So far, 693 out of 5,277 flights in and out of T5 have been cancelled, with 75 per cent of the cancellations due to T5 problems and the rest down to extreme weather.
Meanwhile, the T5 disruption spread to the rest of Heathrow and 54 other carriers following BA's announcement. The delayed move to T5 will disrupt plans by carriers such as Air France-KLM to move into a refurbished Terminal 4.
BMI, which operates from Terminal 1, criticised the decision and said BAA had made the UK "once again a laughing stock".
Nigel Turner, BMI chief executive, said: "It is an absolutely outrageous announcement by BAA and done with no thought, consideration or consultation of any other airline other than BA. The sequence of moves affects over 50 airlines, including BMI, at Heathrow. The programme and timescale of changes was agreed in joint consultation with all airlines that are now geared up to undertake the moves as agreed."
