BRITISH AIRWAYS hopes that Heathrow's T5 will become known as the “self-service” terminal - with as many as nine out of ten passengers having no need to contact members of staff until they reach boarding gates.

The airline, which has exclusive use of T5 when it opens to the public next week, says that it has set a target for 80-90 per cent of travellers checking in online or using the self-service check-in kiosks and “fast bag drop-off” points. This is up from about 60per cent at the other terminals that BA uses in Britain.

The result, said a spokesman, would be less contact with staff and, it is hoped, fewer queues. He predicted that the terminal had a better chance of running smoothly than T1 or T4, the other Heathrow terminals with BA departures, because it was purpose-built for “do-it-yourself” travel.

“Instead of queuing to talk to staff at check-in desks, people will use the 96 kiosks and 96 fast bag drops. There should be no more than one person in front at each machine.”

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The spokesman added that staff would “circulate”, offering assistance to anyone confused about how to operate machines. People who want to go to an old-fashioned check-in desk are welcome to do so, he said. There will be 54 such desks.

A passenger with one bag to check in is expected to reach security control within ten minutes. There will be two security gates and the intention is that 95 per cent of passengers will pass through within five minutes. An automatic carousel taking hand luggage through screening machines will cut out time spent waiting for staff to provide trays, according to BAA, the airport operator.

There will also be a new security requirement for people taking domestic flights in which four fingerprints will be scanned at the security gate. The BAA spokeswoman said: “It is to stop the possibility of an international passenger swapping travel documents with a domestic passenger and then landing at a domestic airport, thus avoiding immigration.”

But what about the shopping? There will be 112 shops spread over two levels, including a Tiffany & Co, Prada, Mulberry, Harrods, Paul Smith (selling gold leather passport holders) and Thomas Pink. The latter will have a monitor showing FTSE share prices (for those who dare to look).

Food outlets will include a 180-seat Gordon Ramsay restaurant called Plane Food, a Wagamama noodle bar, and a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop selling “limited edition T5 doughnuts called The Strawberry Promise”. There will be no Burger King or McDonald's. Instead, there are Giraffe Juice and Lovejuice fruit smoothie bars and two seafood restaurants.

Some passengers will need to transfer on a 45-second train to the “B” section of Terminal 5. These trains will leave every 90 seconds.

Architect Mike Davies, who worked with Richard Rogers on the £4.3 billion project, says that he attempted to create a “piazza” atmosphere with “a piece of a city under a roof”.

Car parking at T5 will cost from £15.40 a day at a car park that is a ten-minute bus ride away - and there is an exit for the terminal from the M25. The Heathrow Express is a 21-minute journey to T5 (compared with 15 minutes to T1-3) and is the same price: from £28 return.

The Piccadilly line has also extended to the terminal, with a one-way fare of £4, taking about 50 minutes.

More than 30 million people are expected to use the new terminal each year, as many as 90,000 a day. But will it really be queueless? Aviation expert Gary Noakes said: “There's no such thing as queue-less. There will always be queues, especially if something goes wrong. It will be interesting to see what happens.”

Details: www.terminal5.ba.com

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