Although British Airways has had a woeful week following the opening of Heathrow’s terminal 5, business travellers have not borne the worst of it. Many business travellers who had planned to fly through Heathrow and use services from the new terminal will have been on fully flexible tickets. As soon as the scale of the problems at Heathrow emerged, many regular travellers will have been on the phone to the travel agent or whizzing off a quick email from their BlackBerry to their PA to get a refund on their ticket and rebook another flight with another airline not using terminal 5.

That’s the beauty of fully flexible tickets of course. If your plans change, then you can change your ticket. But that flexibility comes at a steep price. You pay hundreds of pounds extra and most times you probably won’t need to change it. When you do need to change it, such as this week at Heathrow, the extra money seems worth it.

On top of that, British Airways’ most valuable customers – the ones flying from London to New York – have been spared the problems. Their flights are still operating from good old terminal 4. BA is now saying it won’t move those flights to terminal 5 until all the problems are resolved. Regular business travellers on the London-New York route, especially those holding fully flexible tickets for the months to come, are probably feeling rather smug.

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BACKGROUND

• T5 hit by new flights fiasco

• Terminal problems for BA’s Walsh?

• Lost BA bags sent to Milan

• BA reviews transfers to T5

• Unions had warned BA over chaotic move

Related Internet Links

• VIDEO: Ben Webster on BA and the blame game

Related Internet Links

• AUDIO: Ginny McGrath onboard one of the first flights out of Terminal 5

Related Internet Links

• Video: Chaos at Terminal 5

Multimedia

• Pictures: Heathrow's Terminal 5 chaos

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