Heathrow airport’s Terminal 4 to reopen in July

In its financial results yesterday, Heathrow announced that it is planning to open Terminal 4 in July.

This may have come as a surprise to the airlines involved. We had someone from a big Terminal 4 carrier in our office a couple of weeks ago and he was planning to be in another terminal until next year. (Apparently, when Terminal 3 reopened, the airlines were only give four weeks notice.)

From a HfP point of view, the most likely to reason to use Terminal 4 would be to fly Qatar Airways, Etihad, Malaysia Airlines, Air France or KLM.

There will be some changes though. The Malaysia Airlines lounge has closed for good, as has the huge SkyTeam lounge. On the positive side, Qatar Airways had been working on an extension to its Premium Lounge before the pandemic – I don’t know if the work has been completed or not.

It is not even clear if all of the Terminal 4 airlines would want to move back. With Air France and KLM now part of the Virgin Atlantic and Delta transatlantic joint venture, they would presumably want to be in Terminal 3 to allow for easy connections. The closure of the SkyTeam lounge doesn’t help either.

I would be more surprised if Qatar Airways remained in Terminal 5, as BA is already spilling over into Terminal 3 and would presumably like its gates back.

One upside is that the opening – along with its rail links to the other terminals – will make the numerous excellent hotels attached to Terminal 4 more attractive to those flying from Terminals 2, 3 and 5.