After my first departure through it I couldn't resist sharing some
thoughts about London Heathrow Terminal 5. I was going to just sit and
read there, but the various things I noticed motivated me to put pen to
paper instead!
First, the fast bag drop turns out not to be useful until it's 3 hours
before your flight. I can kind of see the point of that, but when they
have all their fancy shops airside, you'd think they'd want people over
that side unencumbered by luggage as quickly as possible so they can
have more time to spend money from which the terminal operator profits.
I arrived rather early because I was using public transport from the
other side of the country so I needed to build in some slack in case of
unexpected delays. Still, okay -
So I bought myself a sandwich and a chocolate bar so the meal would help
to pass the time. Except, despite them selling such stuff, they are no
trash cans! Eventually I talked the security check staff into letting me
go into there to use their trash cans and go back out again to continue
waiting for the bag drop to open for me. I saw that other people, rather
than just tossing trash on the ground, had left it neatly on whatever
horizontal surfaces were conveniently to hand.
Another obvious issue was the departure listing screens. They seem to
use a smaller font than I recalled from years ago from the older
monitors in the other terminals, and the seating doesn't appear to be
positioned to give a good view of them. I have better than 20/20 vision,
and I found very few seats anywhere that gave a clear view of the text
on any monitor, so I would have to keep getting up to check. Moreover,
those screens were the only place reporting the current time! There's no
shortage of airy open space with high places for large screens for
advertisements, etc. - a large clock high up at each end would have
sufficed. Their absence seemed rather odd to me for such a major public
transit terminal.
Telephones did exist but were hard to find. I eventually found a couple
tucked behind the area F check-in desks. Perhaps they thought cellphones
would sate the need for clocks and telephony, forgetting that many
casual passengers travelling internationally have cellphones or plans
that are either absurdly expensive overseas or don't work at all, and a
lot of us wear as little metal as possible (e.g., watches) for travel to
make security fast and easy. (My own approach is to have someone in the
country buy a prepaid telephone card and tell me the numbers on it so I
can `use' it from public telephones without physically having it.)
So, anyhow, those were just the things I noticed on my first visit,
before I got airside. (The point about the departure screens listing
flights certainly applies airside too, though - poorly-placed seating
for seeing the text on those screens.) Goodness knows how much more I'd
notice were I a frequent user. It makes me wonder if the above was all
the result of conscious decisions, or if they really just didn't think
about the design from passengers' point of view. I'll certainly agree it
was pretty to look at, spacious, etc., but I didn't notice any comment
cards anywhere, perhaps they're fed up of reading them!
I hope the above helps others prepare for their trip via terminal 5.
Mark |