They still haven't fixed it

A couple of years ago I took part in the proving trails for Heathrow's Terminal 5.

Shortly afterwards it proved that what I'd actually done was to waste a couple of days of my life on a pointless exercise that served no purpose.

On all the trials I took part in the feedback that I and everyone else gave was "lovely looking building, do you think you need some more seats".

At the time we were told that the seating wasn't a problem and everything would be fine.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to the now infamous failed opening of Terminal 5 and guess what - biggest complaint (after lack of information and why didn't you test the place out first) was the lack of seating.

So I would have thought that a couple of years down the line this would now have been addressed.

It appears I thought wrong.

Yes, today was the first weekend of the school summer holidays, so the airport was experiencing one of its busiest days, but everything was running pretty much to time. There were a couple of flights with 20 minute delays, but nothing major and certainly not plane loads of people stuck for hours waiting for a delayed flight that may or may not ever get them to their holiday.

Instead, it was a very busy, but not exceptional day. In other airports it would have meant people getting cosy, but everyone who had wanted to sit down would be able to.

Not so in Terminal 5, still there is insufficient seating, and still people have to sprawl out on the floor or sit up against shop fronts.

I don't know what the going rate for a day of your life is, but if they still haven't fixed it after all this time, I'm seriously considering asking BAA for a refund of two of mine.

Just how many links do you need?

As I was walking through the city centre earlier today I noticed there was a bus stop for the airport express to Copenhagen Airport.

Normally this wouldn’t be a particularly odd thing, most airports have an express bus link.

It’s just with Copenhagen, it’s so well connected to the airport that does it really need this extra one.

To put it into context, Heathrow is the UK’s largest airport, and one of the most important airports in the world. Copenhagen is certainly the most important airport in Scandinavia, and certainly comes in the top 10 of major European airports.

Heathrow:

• Quarter hourly train service taking around 20 minutes at the cost of around £20


• Tube every 10 minutes or so, taking well over the hour, but only costing around the £6 mark


• Coaches pretty regular, taking well over the hour, but again costing only a couple of quid


• Buses, local buses from nearby train and tube stations, nearest advertised link is in Feltham taking 30 minutes and costing £1.20

Copenhagen:

• Train every 10 minutes, taking around 10 minutes, cost £4


• Metro every 4 minutes, taking less than 15 minutes, cost £4


• Bus every 4 minutes, taking less than 30 minutes, cost £4

Which brings me back to the question, why, on top of 6 trains, 15 metro’s and 15 busses an hour (and that’s only the buses from the city centre, not the local ones closer to the airport) would you need a coach service?

And then, in small writing, I discovered the real reason. And it’s an old favourite, it’s RyanAir.

The “Copenhagen” airport express is actually to take you over into Sweden to an airport on the outskirts of Malmo that RyanAir use as their “Copenhagen” base.

They used to actually call it Copenhagen, but then some busy-body in the EU decided that landing at an airport in another country which uses a different currency to the city your advertising you are flying to is a bit misleading and perhaps they should be a little more honest. Just who do these EU Bureaucrats think they are? Next they’ll be saying the plans to rename Birmingham as London-Birmingham International are not on!