AITO: Agents will have to warn passengers of three hour check-in and check-out
Kristina Hulme, managing partner of the AITO Agent, Travel by Design Group comments on the embarrassment of delays at London Heathrow.
"I have just returned from a wonderful and peaceful trip to Muscat, in Oman, but experienced the most horrendous crowd control and delays on arriving in London Heathrow T5 from a BA flight and trying to board the shuttle train to pick up my bags. It was 6.30 am on a Sunday and there were maybe two staff on duty dealing with hundreds of people crammed into a very small arrivals area.
As we were descending on the crowded escalator, a serious safety issue arose at the bottom – nobody could get off the escalator. The escalator was clearly not being monitored and I feared for a serious accident, with people being crushed. There were hundreds of arriving passengers and not enough shuttle trains. The BAA officials then closed the escalator going up to Baggage Collection and Transfers leading to passport control. This created a huge health and safety risk, as the crowd were directed to go against the signposted direction notices. We queued for almost two hours and it took three hours in total from arrival to getting on to our private minibus.
Passport control was the ghastly mess that’s being much debated in the media, but my point is that, with endless queues of indignant passengers waiting for their passports to be checked at a snail’s pace, BAA needs to be able to manage those queues properly and professionally, without adding health and safety risks to what is already a very unsatisfactory situation.
BAA is not, in my view, running Heathrow to a safe standard. Clearly there must be limits for each area according to fire regulations and these must have been exceeded in the case I am reporting. In my opinion, there was not a quick enough response for the volume of traffic. BAA must know, or be able to find out, arrival aircraft loads. By 7.30 am there were more BAA seasonal staff visible, but they were huddled in groups, seemingly untrained about what to do in such circumstances.
There were two girls staffing a desk labelled "Airport Statistics Survey" but, when I approached them to advise them of the problems below, they simply said "we cannot see how long the queue is from where we are placed" – no initiative or wish to help was evident, unfortunately. If this situation continues, travel agents and tour operators will need to advise passengers of not only a three-hour check-in, but also a three-hour check-out. It’s ridiculous in a brand-new terminal.
How embarrassing for us all in the year of that the Olympics are coming to the UK. Something must be done – but will it be in time? I hope that BAA will take speedy action to make sure that its airports are fit for purpose and don’t let the side down in the run-up to the Olympics and going forward."
Diane
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