Patrick Crozier

By now, most readers will be perfectly well aware of the problems at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 which have led to cancelled flights and passengers being separated from their luggage.  Readers will also be perfectly familiar with the media’s calm, measured and sober reporting of the issues involved.

Glancing at the background it appears that what’s happened is that a number of small problems combined to make one big one.  The good news is that most of these are “soft” issues - to do with staffing and training and therefore reasonably easy to sort out - rather than “hard” issues - to do with the infrastructure and computer systems - which would take ages.

Terminal 5 was a massive project brought in on time and on budget.  This says some pretty good things about the people involved. 

I suspect Terminal 5 will be working pretty well pretty soon.