BA Boss Grilled Over Terminal 5 Debacle

By Sky News SkyNews - Wednesday, May 7 05:01 pm

British Airways' boss Willie Walsh has admitted making "some mistakes" in connection with the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco.

He told MPs he regretted what had happened but did not believe there would be any major problems when the new building opened on March 27.

Mr Walsh conceded training beforehand had been inadequate and that staff were not familiar enough with the new facilities and computer software.

He said all but 125 of the thousands of items of luggage which had been lost had now been returned to their owners.

Mr Walsh told the Commons Transport Select Committee: "We believed that T5 was ready to open and we believed we had prepared sufficiently.

"With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear we had made some mistakes.

"We had compromised on the testing regime because of delays in the building of the terminal and this did impact on the T5 opening."

He said the original plan was to move 92% of BA's operations into T5 on March 30 but this had been scaled down.

Asked if he regretted not postponing the move into the £4.3bn terminal, Mr Walsh said, with hindsight, he did.

He blamed a combination of factors for the opening day fiasco. These included delays in staff getting into car parks and through security areas.

He went on: "We didn't supply staff with sufficient training and familiarisation. If we did it again, we would do things differently

"Yes, people expressed concerns (in advance) and many of the things that people expressed concerns about worked well."

The heads of Heathrow operator BAA have also been quizzed by the committee.

BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said the company had been too busy sorting out the problems caused by the debacle to launch an inquiry.

He revealed 17 of T5's lifts were still not working - more than five weeks after the opening.

He also apologised "unreservedly" for the debacle and admitted BAA was to blame for "some of the problems".

Dozens of flights were cancelled and huge queues formed after the new 'state-of-the-art' baggage system broke down.

It was several days before BA was able to run a full service from T5, which had been officially opened by the Queen on March 14.

The shambles led to the airline postponing the transfer of nearly all its long-haul services to T5 from April 30 to June.

Two top BA execs - operations director Gareth Kirkwood and the customer services director David Noyes - have since lost their jobs.

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