Sounds to me like they booked the Queen for a specific date so it had to go live ready or not. How familiar this is. How many times do we hear of bad service because ' we didnt anticpate the level of customers/phone calls/ applications' (delete as applicable)? I work for a UK bank. One of our computer systems was never finished properly because it had to 'go live' on a specific date. It doesnt even autoscroll to the next line when you type. I cant understand why companies continue to have such PR disasters rather than waiting a little longer and getting it right.

carol, Leicester, UK

BA closed all but one of their Reservation Centres in the UK, stating that everyone will book online, check in online, and Fast Bag Drop. No humans. Try getting a human on the phone now!!!

Another case of mis-underestimating the need for humans.

Another fine mess. Think you should resign Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy

senga, Birmingham, England

Having worked 17 years in the logistics industry running big retails distribution operations I have learnt that when you are implementing big infrastructure projects like this you go for a phased launch, so you are able to cope with the inevitable problems which will present themselves. Sounds to me like there are a few senior board members on a massive ego trip and no doubt people further down the food chain who will have warned that this was inevitable but have been ignored. I have seen this sort of thing time and again where senior management get stuck in their ivory towers and think they have the monopoly on all the good ideas. The Operations Director and Willie Walsh should do the decent thing - stand down and let people who know what they are talking about both in terms of logistical planning and customer service get on with cleaning up their mess!

Claire, Brough,

Heathrow is a joke, and was know to be one even before this mess. I actually refuse to fly through Heathrow and choose Gatwick and even Luton.

Who ever thought of opening up the whole terminal straight away thinking there would be no glitches should be fired.

BAA should get their house in order before they even consider starting work on another runway - I for one would not like to be on the first flight to land on the new runway when it is built incase they cant handle it!

Rich Mathews , Edinburgh, Lothian

The passengers ,who have to fly, encounter ubiquitous problems when such an unexpected problem occurs. It must be taken into account that it is the passenger who need to fly on time not the staff therein. Why would they bother?This is not the first time BA is dealing with such a giant obtacle. To be precise, it has had to tackle hanbag handling problems few months ago. Although, it has taken a massive amount of time but it was overcome. Many more unexpected events happen when it is time to check in such as overcrowded fight, delays.

Passengers are paying the price for the problem regardless of whoever/whatever has caused it. The higher authority should think deeply the reasons behind it and also eliminate existing stubborn problem thinking of future customer s who might book a place instead of something else because BA is still consolidates it position. No matter miracle happens. But customer service should be put forward.

Farhad, Stratford,London, England

I arrived at Changi 3 in Singapore a week after it opened
My baggage arrvived before me.
It is designed for 22 million ppy and cost less than 1Billion £ .
HR5 is desinged for 30 million ppy and cost £4.3 billion.
The one works and the other does not. Why? Overdesign?

stephen bull, fontes, france

My Gandmother warned me about flying with BA when she flew with them 20 years ago ... I am glad I have followed her advice and have never had any problems.

Carmel, Aberystwyth, Wales

I worked on the construction of T5.

I've heard constantly on the news that the place is on time & on budget.

It probably is if you believe BAA's propaganda which conveniently forgets to include all the 'back of house' areas which aren't finished yet and are hidden behind plywood hoardings out of view of the public and TV cameras.

As for 'on budget' - depends which budget you are working to and whether you can 'hide' any additional costs on other BAA projects (T3 perhaps).

Mark, London,

Why is it that they all over the UK wherever you go they are filming scenes from The Apprentice ?

Life abroad is easier, they don't have the Apprentice (or Alan Sugar !)
-apart from the USA

Andy Bush, Warwick,

Nicholas Gifford, Sydney. London may be old and yea cold at the moment, but thank god I live here. Did love your harbour when I visited mate and your emmm....hang on sure there was something else, emmm, nope can't remember, still your harbour was nice! Just heading out later, going out with a load of Aussi's, so many of you over here, can't think why, when you have such a nice harbour. I can't remember the airports in Australia being anything special, in fact the rudeness of staff was pretty striking when i visited. In my experience its a factor of all airports of the world (including the UK). What has happened at T5 does shame the UK but what is more shocking is the willingness of the management of BA and BAA to blame those staff who have had to deal with the situation. This is a situation that has been created by poor management and pure arrogance. The sooner we see some change on the board of both companies the better!

P Taylor, London ,

The main reason seems to be the privatisation of the British transporatation systems.
What is worse is the selection of BAA (Ferrovial of Spain), which is essitially a construction company, without any experience in airport management until it started the operation of Madrid airport. At Madrid airport, directions are faulty and misguiding. So when a company of that type tries to operate and manage LHR, we know it will be a total failure. Ferrovial's only interest is to make money, allowing many stores to occupy air port terminals both in the Madrid terminals and LHR. Without getting rid of BAA, LHR will remain one of the worst airports in the world.
Furthermore, it is really unthinkable that T5 opened without thorough rehearsals and inspections. Anything new must be debugged and otherwise, there will be huge problems.
Too much emphasis on profits has back fired.
What BAA has done is like launching a space craft without thorough testing.

yasuyuki tateishi, New York, USA

Sounds like something organised by Gordon Brown and his mates in the IT companies - think Child Tax Credits, Pension Credits, MoD Payroll, Gold Bullion sales and so on and on and on....

Philip C, Wallingford, Oxon

I fly Alitalia. It may be bankrupt but it is still taking me to all my destinations. And on time too!

Ivan, Rome, Italy

Why senior management get away with it? Has anyone been fired or resigned? Oh, no, big fat salaries and huge perks is not something you give up easily! I can only blame useless, incompetent managers, who obviously "know better" how to run a new terminal, unfortunately, even it is all shambles, no one takes responsibility and resigns.

Telma, Guildford villages, England

I just wonder if the T5 management have ever heard of he concept of a pilot run (no pun intended!) with a small number of flights and passengers to start with to test out the systems and ensure that capacities are balanced and staff adequately trained to deal with the new setup. Then expand that as confidence grows that the system will operate correctly with higher volumes.

The idea that such a complex and high-volume system would operate from day one was a disaster waiting to happen. Or a vanity project running at the passengers' expense.

JohnM, Perth, Scotland

The Heathrow chaos is an unmitigated disaster for BA and for people stranded and without baggage. My colleague was affected - going for a week's skiing in Canada and still (three days into the holiday) having no luggage!

BA could have handled things so much better - keeping people informed, closing the feedback loop and making sure they owned all the conversations that were happening about the fiasco at T5. We've put together some free consulting advice for BA on customer engagement and how things could have been better:

http://blog.freshnetworks.com/?p=43

Matt Rhodes, London,

A complete and utter joke! Walsh should be fired over this. As he admitted, this mess IS his responsibility and is just more proof that he is the wrong man to run one of Britain's most valuable brands. Get rid of him!

Paul, Vancouver, Canada

I feel that BA and BAA deemed the building operational before it was ready. In a rush to start making the building pay, the customers are essentially paying for "debugging" the system.

Meanwhile Beijing's new terminal - bigger than all of Heathrow's terminals combinded- is open.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/flying+high+new+beijing+terminal/1680347

roger, london,

I am British born and bred, as a young engineer I was taught to use dry runs and pace projects in to better deal with problems.
Who was the idiot that decided to install in one go? Some one should have stood up to the top management and insisted to bring the changes step by step.

Walter, Pennsylvania

Walter Guest, Washington Pa, USA

I'll believe that Willie Walsh has taken 'responsibility for what happened' when he either receives his P45 or takes a big salary and bonus cut for 2008.

Otherwise his statement is simply drivel.

At the time of writing, BA has admitted (per BBC News) to a luggage backlog of at least 15,000 bags in T5. So much for their claim that the baggage system is now working well.

Michael Smith, Southampton, UK

The problems at Heathrow seem to be universal whenever, new “high tech” systems are introduced.
Madrid new terminal 4, had similar issues – cash machines not working, car park access issues (state of the security systems number plate recognition etc), check-in computers not working, baggage systems. Which supplier is behind the baggage systems in Madrid it was Siemens?
Don’t hold your breath, these will take three months or more to resolve.

Charles, Madrid, Spain

Hey, rich pickins' for someone there (and that will happen, no doubt)!! Let's just face it, the British couldn't organise the proverbial**** Look at the recent fiascos of the London Eye, when they couldn't raise it, the Millenium Dome, the new Wembley Stadium, no doubt the Olympics will be the same. We're a third rate nation, with third rate rulers, a third rate economy and even lower than third rate management abilities.

Paul Downes, Milton Keynes, Bucks

John in Vienna. That is wonderful idea. I would also recommend to people living in London who want to fly to get the Eurostar to Paris and fly from there. The train ticket will almost certainly be cheaper than getting a British Rail train to any other airport in the UK.

Does anyone else think that they should be made to remove the word British from the front of their name as it tars us all with their useless brush.

Paul, London,

I flew through Singapore Changi, Terminal 3 on its opening day in January and it worked like clockwork. T5 could and should have been the same. If it wasn't ready to open, the opening day should have been delayed. I flew through Terminal 1 yesterday, it was like a ghost town. Today, according to BBC news, their cameras have been excluded from T5 in West London (the only other notable place they are excluded from is Zimbabwe!). This unacceptable disaster for the travelling public has caused incredible human misery and suffering. T5 should be temporarily closed and Willie Walsh, CEO, sacked. He managed to destroy the Irish national airline, Aer Lingus. Now he is similarly ruining whatever faith the public had in BA as well as damaging the British economy and international image and reputation of Britain. A shameful situation. I stopped flying BA 4 years ago, used to fly them every week, switched to BMI and never lost a piece of luggage since, still fly every week.

Peter Maguire, Newry, Northern Ireland

My grandfather was involved in the original design of Heathrow and showed the Queen around when it opened. Admittedly he did design the stacking of aircraft not to go over his house in Petts Wood but I'm sure he is turning in his grave at the T5 fiasco. I wonder what the news stories were at the opening of T1?

Julian Ratcliffe, Portland, Oregon, USA

The best thing when going to London is to fly to Paris, which has efficient airports and take the French high speed train to London

John Oxley, VIenna, Austria

Extraordinary efficiency! Welcome in Europe, UK!

MARCO, BERGAMO, ITALY

Honk Kong's then new international airport was opened in July 1998 and then took up to six months to get it working properly with similar problems. So do not panic, go by train or via another airport.

B J Deller, Marbella, Spain

To answer Nicholas Gifford how about a large proportion of the billionaires of the world ? Surely they are missing something and perhaps you could enlighten them about the merits of being in a cultural desert 24 hours away from anywhere important ?

Ben , Manchester,

Heathrwow and BA are a national dsigrace.
Why is that Singapore HongKong and other new airports can open smoothly without the chaos that we see here.
If I can I always fly from Birmingham or Manchester

I never fly BA they treat passengers like they are a terrible inconvenience.

john, clifton Nottingham, UK

When an airline has problems like this down in the USA, they send passengers via another airline.

The UK should have a similar rule. Get your stuff in order, or you have to send your passengers via a competitor.

Keith S, Winnipeg, Canada

Sometimes we get our luggage in Denver. All it takes is patience. Remeber it isn't the people, it is what ever goes on behind the scene.

L.S.., Denver, CO/USA

It is time for the government to put aside the vested interests of Heathrow terminal failure and promote regional airports and invest in their infrastructure. The hub and spoke model does not work and BA knows that. Regional flights to schipol and Paris make more sense for the regions.
Terminal 5 debacle proves it and BA has not even moved all its services to the new terminal. This is not teething problems but systemic.

G Davies, cardiff, wales

Why do BA bother.

Farrukh, Woking, UK

The World's favourite airline anyone?

carl, London,

I am not surprised, it appears that most large companies in the UK could not organize themselves out of a paper bag - one example is a recent personal experience trying to get a phone line installed in central London, the frustrating process took ten months to accomplish.
We haven't flown BA for years and choose to use Virgin for all out overseas trips.

Jenifer Sunter, Winchester, Virginia

Willie Walsh seems to be using a technique started started under Tony Blair. The miscreant simply says "I take responsibility for what happened" and then carries on as normal, drawing full pay and rations. Responsibility seems to stop short of actually showing any.

This shambles will cost BA shareholders dearly in a combination of fines and the consequence of lost business. Despite this, I suspect the personal cost to Mr`Walsh, his co-directors and the senior staff will be zero.

Following this incredible display of just how far the board is removed from the front line reality of the business, they should *all* go - without 'compensation' or severance pay.

Ray Warren, Dartmouth,

Who would want to visit cold, old, dirty, boring, rude, expensive, rushed, London anyway. Heathrow has always been a nightmare and will continue to be one. It is staffed by usually young English people who have an over inflated view of their own importance who have little or no tolerance of people who have to travel.

Nicholas Gifford, sydney, Australia

Over the decades, I have flown in and out of Heathrow many,
many times. Fed up, several years ago, I began flying into
Gatwick. I now fly into Schiphol (Amsterdam) and then into the
UK. My best experiences have been in Edinburgh and Manchester, both more easily accessible.

P.H. Salus, Toronto, Canada

Has nobody at BAA ever heard of the concept of a "soft launch"? Run the thing for a few days on a small scale, iron out the kinks and then go for the full blown launch. It ain't rocket science.

Colin McClenahan, Vancouver,

Sounds like Denver int. Airport!!!!

Don Ross, Springffield, US?/Illinois

Now that the world's air travelling public have been made aware of the incompetence of those running Heathrow they will presumably "vote with their feet" and so now we will have no need for a third runway.

d redwood, london,