Watch the video tour inside Terminal 5, ahead of its opening

Travel will revert to its glamour days with the opening of Terminal 5, we’re told, by British Airways chairman Martin Broughton in our video above.

He was speaking to us from one of the airline’s new lounges at Terminal 5, where it was hard to argue with him – behind us the final touches were being put to a champagne bar, spa and a series of striking art installations.

Art is not a new venture for BA. The carrier has a collection of over 1,500 works by artists including Peter Doig, who is currently exhibiting at the Tate Britain, and Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.

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• Inside Terminal 5

Sadly only BA staff and a minority of its passengers enjoy these works because they are hung at the BA headquarters at Waterside, near Heathrow, and in airport lounges around the world, accessible only to premium passengers and frequent flyers.

This won’t change with the opening of the BA-only Terminal 5 on March 27. While the majority of passengers using the terminal will pass the time in the luxury shops and restaurants of the main building, premium passengers will be treated to one-off artworks as well as the usual perks of champagne and nibbles in the various BA lounges.

BA has spent £60 million developing six lounges in Terminal 5, with a large chunk of this spent on commissioned art installations, from paintings to ground-breaking illuminating sculptures and moving wallpaper.

BA has used Artwise, a curating practice with which it has a long relationship, to source art for its Terminal 5 lounges. Among the new pieces being hung in the lounges are three by Christopher Pearson, the artist we interviewed in the video above.

On the day we were filming, the installation hanging outside the lounges, The Cloud by artist collaboration Troika, was not switched on. A YouTube video shows the installation of hanging sculpture, which uses the flip dot technology that is used in many railway station boards to flick from black to shimmering silver.

But it’s not all about art – the building design and views at Terminal 5 are also expected to please passengers. Rather like the vision that architect Norman Foster had for Stansted airport, the Richard Rogers Partnership, the architects behind Terminal 5, have used glass and steel liberally to maximise natural light and offer captivating views of the runway.

The shops and restaurants will also be a distraction – alongside airport regulars such as Duty Free, WH Smith and Boots, are names like Paul Smith, which will sell airport exclusive products, Tiffany’s, which will be the first airport outlet in Europe, and Gordon Ramsay, with his first airport restaurant. Hot fast food companies like McDonalds and Burger King are notable by their absence.

The £4.3 billion project has its fair share of critics. A report in The Observer claimed that passengers at nearly half of the terminal’s departure gates will be bussed to planes, rather than being able to reach them on foot by air bridges. This is refuted by BA, which says that the figure is closer to 20 per cent. The gates at Terminal 5 are either located in the main terminal building or the two satellite buildings, Satellite B and Satellite C.