I had the dubious pleasure of spending several hours in T5 on day one and had a lot of time to speak to staff. The underlying problem seemed to be a total lack of information and very few middle / senior managers on site able to make decisions and to apply some flexibility with the rules to keep things moving. Staff had identified many simple problems which could be fixed easily, but they were not allowed to change anything as Management had a plan and were sticking to it regardless. Only about ¼ of the fast bag drop desks were open and most were manned by staff who were having to make it up as they went along. After queuing for about 25 minutes at a “fast bag drop” we got to the front only to find the teenager behind the desk receiving a text message. She had to go, “it was what the phone told her”. So there we all were, the desk closed and we had to join another queue. This was just one example of a problem that could have been fixed easily, if there was anyone with authority on the shop floor. The general consensus was that most of the managers were hiding.
There was a small gaggle of managers hogging the seats in Nero complaining that they had been up since 4 am. It’s a good job no one who had hobble in from a long-haul flight heard those conversations. In between sipping his late, one was making loud calls to HQ explaining (apart from a few protesters) how well it was all going. A couple of hours later just as people started staggering out of baggage reclaim after a four hour wait, someone was overheard discussing with a BAA boss the fact that some bad news press reports were getting out and that they needed to “suppress” them. Wonder how they do that?
The general consensus of the front of house staff was that it was 90% good, but they were deeply frustrated at the lack of support or visibility from those above in listening to and dealing with the niggles which combined were bringing the place to it’s knees.
If BA / BAA are to be allowed to control such a massive public building, they should be forced to have some serious contingency plans in place. For starters, 10,000 deck chairs so that the people arriving in knackered off long-haul flights don’t have to sit on a marble floor waiting four hours for bags. Until basic human comfort provision is in place, they should be allowed to operate the building.
sky9. One of the helpers I met admitted that she didn't know anything about BA and didn't have any numbers for he moble phone since she was an actress and had just been hired in for the day to be nice to people.
Last edited by biddedout; 29th Mar 2008 at 22:01.