I have just been part of the trials of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow. I played the would-be passenger with about 300 others.
It was an exercise conducted in an amateurish manner !
I am sure you have heard of Feng Shui ? Well this building breaks all the rules. It is hideous, gross in more ways than one.
"Souless!" said a pretend passenger behind me.
I thought that Suvanabhumi was too much grey concrete and steel but at least it has some Thai style. Large classic statues etc. When the rain came through the roof a pretty Thai lady ran up to me with an umbrella. The Thais have tried to stamp some images of Thailand on the building.
But Terminal 5 = Yuck !
You can have any colour as long as its GREY - to paraphrase Henry Ford. Talk about a Damian Hirst pharmacy artwork in the Tate Modern Gallery. Well at least that had some humour.
This monstrosity is nothing but bad vibes off of straight edges, all in an untasteful light green glass, white and grey steel gurders, and just about grey everything else.
There are a few maze-like traps as well. Coming down one escalator it is quite easy to turn into the equivalent of a broom cupboard as the next direction is not apparent. There was almost a Rugby scrum at the top of one escalator as a bottle-neck at the beginning of the next one caused a pile-up at the top of the previous. All in all a very illogical design.
Let me outa here ! AAAAaaaaaggghhh !
The points that came out of the visit:-
1) Not a simple and user friendly design although they had plenty of space to play with.
2) A train system is needed between the two Terminals in the '5' area.
3) Geoff Want(In effect Willie Walsh's No.2) the ex-British Airways Director of Operations did the video on the T5 presentation. None of the British Airways staff I spoke to hade heard of him ! Can you imagine an England supporter not knowing who is Sven Goran Eriksson ?
4) Purposely my friend and I pretended that we did not hear the last calls for the flight. This was not picked up. When asked who we were I answered,"No speaker da Inglish!" They ran away and found a German speaker who was convinced I came from Bavaria.
5) The general design has no logic, section 'A'does not seem to follow section 'B'. Pus there were a few blind allys.
6) The whole operation was conducted in an amateurish fashion. There was no realism, no problem passengers and no difficulties to solve. If the volunteers did not follow a preset set of instructions the staff were clueless.
7) The automatic check-in kiosks asked if I hade packed my baggage and if anybody had given me something to take on board. What is the point ?
8) The fingerprint and face recognition system worked OK but made one feel like a in house convict. It did not like me scewing up my face like Harpo Marx.
9) The colours and interior design is cold and souless. With lots of grey and pale green windows. I could not get out of the building fast enough.
10) Like all modern airports it will be a shopping mall with runways.
11) The signs were poorly located and did not indicate direction. Many passengers will be standing around scratching their heads.
12) The flight arrival boards are too small and too low, other passengers easily obscure the boards. The writing is far too small.
13) Going through immigration there are massive words saying = UK Border . What does that supposed to mean ? A new breed of dog ? All in all the place is a dog's dinner !
The new Terminal 5 is due to open on March 27th 2008. There were still many contractors(Russians and Poles in hard hats and yellow dayglo vests) trying to finish the job. It will open on 27th March but there will still be people working on it.
