For the second successive day, British Airways canceled dozens of flights at Heathrow’s glittery new Terminal 5 as its staff struggled with state-of-the-art technology supposed to hasten check-in procedures and make flying a pleasure.
The hitches since the terminal opened to paying passengers Thursday were “definitely not British Airways’ finest hour,” the airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, told reporters as he offered a public apology for disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people.
On Thursday British Airways canceled almost 70 flights after a day of delays caused by baggage handling problems. On what was supposed to be the first full day of operations at Terminal 5, many flights took off with their holds empty, carrying passengers with just cabin baggage.
Some passengers slept overnight inside the steel-and-glass terminal — reviving precisely those images of delay and decline that British Airways said it would banish with the opening of the $8.7 billion building that has 10 miles of baggage conveyor belts. The airline is the terminal’s lone occupant.
As a result, Walsh said, about 36 short-haul flights out of Terminal 5 were canceled in advance Friday to ease pressure on staff dealing with unfamiliar procedures and systems. He said there had been “problems in the car parks, airport areas, computer glitches and the baggage system.”
Referring to the prospects for the weekend, he said Friday: “I would expect some disruption tomorrow but I think it will become better as we become accustomed to the building and the quirks of the systems.”
Early Friday travelers arriving to board flights confronted what Tony Pascoe, 35, called chaos as they stood in line for several hours only to be told of cancellations.
The debacle contrasted with Britain’s frequent depiction of itself as the leading European modernizer. “This is a public-relations disaster at a time when London and the U.K. are positioning themselves as global players,” said David Frost, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce. “We can only hope that this will provide a wake-up call as we gear ourselves up to host the Olympics in 2012.”