Pinkman
... does this also mean that I should be concerned about things like maintenance and reliability, training, safety reporting, the decisions they made over their long-term fleet replacement, etc? Or is this just an isolated event?
A very pertinent question and I think that, overall: This is not an isolated event. It is not isolated because, a huge multi-national does not produce a foul up like this just out of the blue.
For the kind of monumental SABU (Self Adjusting B@lls Up, because it automatically adjusts itself to keep getting worse) of T5 happens because the company has fundamental managerial problems. If one department fouled up, then it would not have happened, if two failed - it could have been salvaged but
everything went wrong and then - the spokesman was running away and the BBC is banned from entering. That shows a top to bottom failure of management to plan, execute and recover from problems.
A simple example, the stories coming out that Ts 1-2-3 were running smoothly with BA out of the way? All those stories we have had in here over the years about T4 being a shambles and the management saying it will be better at T5? Except that ... it's the same managers.
I feel desperately sorry for all the front line staff. Be they ground, cabin or flight, how ghastly to be doing your job so well and knowing that it was all for nothing.