While you were sleeping, one of the busiest airports in the world let out its belt a little. That’s London’s Heathrow, now, as of today, serving you with five terminals, instead of just the four. (Though most American travelers only ever saw 3 — that crazy big one with the shopping mall at the middle — and 4 — that dull old British Airways one.)
The airport is run by BAA. Take one A away and you have BA (well, it is not that simple, but close). As you’d assume, British Airways takes center stage in the whole affair: The fancy new facility will be theirs alone for the duration. Presumably, Terminal 4 will eventually be slowly given up scraps to any poor airline that wants. (Not right now – checks of schedules for April reveal BA to be operating the bulk of flights out of there, with just a couple of exceptions.)
Over at T5, there’s some cool public art but otherwise, this terminal looks like the new ones they built at JFK in recent years. The stock airy/exposed this/soaring that look. Not that we are complaining. Much of Terminal 3 at Heathrow feels like an Eastern European bus station. Here, Gordon Ramsay has a restaurant, and there’s a small branch of Harrods, plus a Prada shop. You know, because Londoners don’t already have enough ways to destroy their credit rating.
If you’re curious — and I was — they upgraded Heathrow Express train service from Paddington to get you to T5 in 21 minutes; however, there’s now just one stop for Terminals 1-4 — called Heathrow Central — which takes the usual 15 minutes.
Here, you’ll have to transfer for service to Terminal 4, which still has its own station, but on the local “Connect” service, which also serves the airport from Paddington, but stops at local stations along the way, including Ealing Broadway, where you can pick up or transfer from the Central Line of the Underground.
UPDATE 0600 EST 3/28 – So, yes – things didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned. Guess the Telegraph was right. Just how right, though, they couldn’t have known. Read about the terminal’s shaky first steps here. Heathrow as usual, sounds like.
