LHR - T5 = Today Sat 14th.
Went to collect my partner's daughter and husband, on their way back from his family in Madrid.
At this end, traffic around LHR very heavy with road closures on M4. Short stay park at T5 VERY busy with top floors indicated as full. Got down to Level 1 and locating a spare slot hampered by the green overhead lamps showing green over a parked car.
(When I was living in Germany in 1998/2000 we never had that problem at MUC!)
No restriction of entering the arrivals area, which was not too bad - I think a lot of cars must have been for departures. Certainly some on Level 1 were departing. They said that airside was very busy.
They real headache was in MAD. A flight to JFK had been canx yesterday (I don't know which carrier) and some pax had been txferred to the BA to get connected through LHR today. Unfortunately, many of the pax had not been told of different paperwork required. Accordingly, the TWO desks open for the 11:40 A320 were swamped and took ages to process everyone. Meanwhile, the temp in Madrid is 30 by mid-morning and my partner's daughter is pregnant. They had been to see the in-laws before she could no longer travel. The 'queues' were very
Mediterranean in style - which means no queing and lots of shoving and the obvious "I am going to miss my flight" requiring firm replies. They certainly thought they would and this was the only BA to LHR today. So they feared PCR test expiry and so on.
The flight left over an hour late and still had to leave about 14 pax behind as they could not wait any longer. A real mess at the airport. So the relative quiet of LHR was apperciated! The actual flight time was fast as there are still far fewer flights operating and so they made up some time. They got bottles of water and crisps on board but had been planning to eat airside before departure. Their view, and with discussions with others there: Only worth it if seeing family! On the positive side, Spain has very high levels of vaccination and people are very good about masks, wearing them when even just walking in the street.