Report: British Airways First Wing security at Heathrow Terminal 5 to close for 3-4 months

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• NigelthePensioner says:

  17 Dec17 December 08:40

  As nothing runs om time these days I personally hope that no work starts until 12th!🙄
  The F security is a massive perk and one which Im sure the bean counter at BA attaches (charges passengers) a sum of £x for. You can bet your last $ that there will be no cash refund or even voluntary offer of Avios for the inconvenience! Bang off an email and see what you get – it costs nothing but moments of your time. The word “quality” has an obscure meaning in the BA fictionary (sic) – see “quality wines and champagnes” etc…. 🤣

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    17 Dec17 December 10:24

    Inconvenience ?

    Oh come off it. It’s a couple of minutes extra walk which passengers had to do until 2017 when the wing opened with no complaint.

    • daveinitalia says:

      17 Dec17 December 11:22

      Less walking for GGLs as no walk through the Flounge is needed 😁

  • Jack says:

    17 Dec17 December 18:06

    You are not going to get a penny in compensation which I am sure you know and I would suggest is not worth wasting your time over . This is down to heathrow and not BA . It is a couple of minutes extra walk from the check in to the lounge which people did pre 2017 when the f wing security opened without any issues

• Andrew. says:

  17 Dec17 December 09:12

  How will US Airports cope financially when their concessions have to compete with brought in liquids?

  $5.99+tax for a 16Oz bottle of Dansani at LAX a few weeks ago. In an aluminium bottle which made the drinking sensation weird, plus I overtightened the lid so couldn’t get it back off again until we landed.

  • Gordon says:

    17 Dec17 December 09:23

    Try $16.41 for a club sandwich at the farmers market at LAX earlier in the year, And it was not up to par either. I emailed the manager and received a refund!

    • AL says:

      17 Dec17 December 19:59

      Ouch! That competes with Erewhon!

  • abc says:

    17 Dec17 December 09:36

    Food is similarly overpriced even though people are currently able to bring their own food.

  • lumma says:

    17 Dec17 December 09:59

    In the USA I always found the normal toothpaste tubes to be over the 3oz limit, so you have to buy the travel sized ones which cost the same for a third of the size

    • Jonathan says:

      17 Dec17 December 10:55

      The Americans love oversized quantities in just about everything, just go to a supermarket in the U.S. for the first time, you’d be amazed at the sheer size and weight (or volume) of the foods there

      • Gordon says:

        17 Dec17 December 12:24

        Yes Publix, walgreens and Costco for example, I had my digital membership on my phone so visited the one in Kissimmee a few weeks back, mind you they have been in the uk for a number of years now & are expanding (west Thurrock store is celebrating its 30 years since opening this year) I joined on day one.
        They make 80% of their profit from membership, that’s why they always push for the dearer Executive membership.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    17 Dec17 December 10:29

    Has the US changed their liquid rules? Not seen any indication of it yet.

    And not every airport which has these scanners has lifted the 100ml rule..

    I don’t think AMS has for example.

    • Roy says:

      17 Dec17 December 10:53

      The US are not planning to change their rules for many years. Their current position is that it would be confusing for passengers for the TSA rules to depend on which airport you are flying from, so the rules can’t change until all airports are upgraded.

      The problem is that there is currently no plan to upgrade the smaller regional airports in the foreseeable future. Personally I think they will have to rethink their approach once the rest of the world updates their rules and the US becomes the odd one out.

      • Jonathan says:

        17 Dec17 December 10:57

        The U.S. relies heavily on air travel, unless you’re flying to and from major cities or airline hub airports, you’d be lucky to find a direct flight, or there’s a lot of people on connecting flights in the airports

      • Doug M says:

        17 Dec17 December 11:30

        When has that worried them, gallons, yards

  • Nick says:

    17 Dec17 December 11:53

    All US airports have water refill stations throughout the concourse and you can take empty bottles through security with no issue, so it doesn’t matter whether Dasani is $1.99, $5.99 or $50.99, you don’t have to pay it.

    The UK is far behind here, with some major airports not offering water at all and others hiding their one station out of the way. Heathrow deserves credit (at least in T5), it’s impossible to go through without walking past it.

    • Gordon says:

      17 Dec17 December 15:50

      Yes, LAX has water refill stations outside the toilets on the walk past the bars and restaurants up to the departures gates. They are touch controlled and one was pouring constantly!

  • Expat in SJC says:

    17 Dec17 December 14:57

    Take your own empty water bottle. Refilling stations (note not fountains) are in all US airports typically outside toilets. SFO terminal 2 has probably the best example. A huge table of ten machines or so – touchless as well- that will dispense ice cold, room temp or sparkling water.

    Next time you are in a domestic TSA line, take a look around, once you start noticing the large numbers of empty hydro flask bottles you can’t unsee it!

• Gordon says:

  17 Dec17 December 09:16

  I’ve seen work taking place at all times behind hoarding at LHR & LGW, as Rob points out there will be no need to strengthen the floor for the new scanners, so the noise will be kept to a minimum,

  The project should involve mainly new M&E installs and alterations.Like new wiring, Control panels, alteration of existing panels, IE control gear, like relays, contactors & IT. These new scanner may come with wiring looms already terminated to the machines.

  There will be noise from time to time, it’s inevitable, but it will not be anything like demolition and construction. There will be the standard signs apologising for the inconvenience. Of as the Americans say. “Pardon our dust”

• Bernard says:

  17 Dec17 December 09:32

  Yet more rumours based on unsubstantiated twit comment, amplified by 12 year olds on flyertalk.
  Perhaps better to wait for anything official or at least sourced?

• Nancy says:

  17 Dec17 December 09:36

  The heading says four months. The first sentence of the article says three months. Which one is it?

  • Andrew J says:

    17 Dec17 December 09:48

    Neither apparently.

    • Rob says:

      17 Dec17 December 10:08

      Depends how you define ‘January to April’ obviously! 15 Jan to 15 April is 3 months, 1 Jan to 30 April is 4 months. Have clarified it though.

• JD_traveller says:

  17 Dec17 December 10:07

  It’s not just a “take a machine out, put new one in” job. There are a lot of other works that need to happen as well. In T3 50% of the security hall in transfers has been out of action for more than 2 months. T3 departures including Fast Track is being completely remodeled. These next machines are bigger, more linear and less flexible on space.

  This isn’t just about two machines being replaced in the F Wing though, think if the number of devices that need to be changed across Heathrow, including all departures, transfer and staff search channels it’s a huge undertaking.

  • Clayton says:

    17 Dec17 December 11:00

    Not to mention that EVERY member of staff in the internal security department ( opposed to external, non terminal campuses security staff) has to be trained by trainers approved and certified by DfT to likewise levels and be fully compliant and signed off. The thresholds involved are both higher and more complex than most would imagine.
    Being intentionally vague and slightly bending my words for obvious reasons it’s not a case of oh you’ve worked on the Siemens X12345 3rd gen mk II so just crack on you’ll work it out. if the Siemens X12345 3rd gen mk III was the change all operators ( and staff who could even rarely be called to operate one) still have to be trained on every difference and operating change. Be tested in the classroom and pass per mandatory requirements. Be tested in a live environment whilst under constant supervision and achieve the same. More ‘stuff’. Some quite complex ‘things’ and be competent enough that when other ‘stuff’ is carried out they know what, why and how correctly. These aren’t a case of a newer variant of existing equipment going in. It’s a throw out what ya know and start again except maybe these 4 things but you also be tested on those as well. With the amount of staff turnover, seepage and loss over the last few years generally the resilience to take staff off stream to train and get signed off hasn’t been managed well as we all know from the sh*t show arrivals, border farce and luggage remained for ages.

    On the upside though. They look cooler and are pretty amazing in how and what they do so I guess that’s something.

    And to save time. Yes coof or not from HM Gov agreeing that yes, maybe, probably a new generation of machines would probably be a good idea at some point. To the process of both nationally and Internationally agreeing their requirements and auditing process’. Asking the world if the tech existed to do the things wanted in the way they were wanted to do said things. To the tendering for suppliers and wether that was best done by HM Gov/ DfT and sold on at agreed unit pricing or if individual airports are made responsible and if so the checks & balances for that. To agreeing…. Let’s just skip the, literally, thousands of process points at this point to arrive at me wholeheartedly agreeing it was painfully slow and pointlessly arrived at an unnecessary & manufactured choke points due to civil servants and politicians lacking sufficient understanding of what was going on/ needed to happen or not happen

• Jack says:

  17 Dec17 December 10:46

  It takes around 3 months to install the machines , calibrate them and then get staff trained on them it is not something that can happen overnight . January – March is typically a quieter period so it makes more sense to do it then so as not to cause too much inconvenience. You can still check in at first as I’m sure was the case before the security opened there so it’s not too big a issue and will be open again before people know it

• Ziggy says:

  17 Dec17 December 11:55

  I’d be interested to know why some comments suggest that staff training is something that increases the time it takes to install these machines. Isn’t training something that can be done offsite (presumably they have working machines elsewhere) and while FW machines are being put in place?

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    17 Dec17 December 13:35

    Ziggy I would hazard that the staff quite possibly are taken offsite to be trained

    But clearly that would adversely impact resourcing of the existing lanes and therefore require at the very least reduced capacity

  • Clayton says:

    17 Dec17 December 17:46

    Ziggy the machine is useless if the operator isn’t certified to use it. The operator is useless if the machine hasn’t achieved all markers for it to be compliant and eligible for live environment use.

    Some training, across the general terminal and airfield workers, can and is done off-site but there are statutory minimum staffing resources levels. Post coof there’s an approachable staffing shortfall throughout the aviation industry which means that even if the majority of the required training could be done off site you wouldn’t really want to. Every day airport staffing operates knowing that X will be on rest days, Y will be on leave, Z will call in sick and AA have been pulled from duty for training. Within those calculations are numerous disaster recovery and you-know-what contingency plans. If the sh*t hits the fan and say you had to evacuate the terminal then you know you’ve got 2 lines worth of staff in training room B34 who can be contacted and rapidly redeployed as needed. If they’re at Bob’s Super Airport Scanners offices 40 miles down the road being trained then there not a recoverable asset and you’ve likely failed your staffing commitments which has the direct result of having to shut down lanes near immediately and that’s when nothing disastrous has occurred.

    Yes there is normally a split of some kind if there’s a defined positive outcome of off siting staff in training but that often varies depending on their role and security staff would be on the end of scale where it would, typically, have a higher bar to hitting the positive outcome as their non usable status has a higher impact potential.
    So yes it does occur but it would be assessed a bit differently to say your customer assistance or general maintenance employees ( not to denigrate those roles in any way of course).

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