(Day One at Terminal 5: image captured on mobile by passengers wedged in a baggage chute, to pass the time as they waited for help.)LONDON: BAA have admitted that 20% of flights which set out from Heathrow’s Terminal Five yesterday “could be anywhere now.”
Nevertheless, bosses are sanguine about the new terminal’s baptism by bedlam.
“It’s perfectly normal for any new terminal to lose a few on its first day,” said disembodied spokeshead, Vultura Bendingaid. “These are teething problems: no less, no more.”
“We may know more if we can get logged on,” explained bookings manager Samael Clive. “That should be any week now.”
The shambles, which is thought to have occurred when a faulty computer began dispatching planes willy-nilly to undisclosed locations, is only the latest in a raft of glitches at the architectural triumph.
* The future’s all yours. Fortune teller Malicia Greaves was horrified to see baggage robots playing catch with her crystal ball, valued at £12 000 (by otherworldly sprites). “I called to them to stop it at once. One robot looked round, distracted by my raucous bellows, and missed his catch. The future ended right there for me, in a million glittering shards. I’ll never know what’s coming up now.”
* Man with no name. Whwhwhuffuffwhhw)#% Mc&, a linguist from Cheddar whose name consists of a series of whistles, barks, made-up noises and punctuation, claimed that Terminal 5 had breached his human rights when the new technology failed to address him properly. A number of others met with the same problem, but they were only silly foreigners.
* Anxious Mum. Rosie Velorum put two of her less important girls (Treacle, 6, and Business, 11) on a conveyer belt, just to see what would happen. “I don’t know where they are,” she told reporters and anyone who would listen. “You’d think they could have put up a sign or something.”
But it is the loss of flights which is causing most concern.
“I’d just opened Aspire, Microsoft’s aerospace package, and started allocating routes,” sobbed flight planner, Sally Watermargin, “when a friendly puppy popped up saying ‘You seem to be trying to run an airport. Would you like help with that?’ Foolishly I clicked yes, and everything went crazy.”
According to BAA bosses, though, the pandemonium could equally have been down to a baggage malfunction.
“It’s conceivable that someone took the 39 flights home by mistake,” Controller Peter Spaghettisburg said. “Anyone who was at the airport yesterday should check their luggage and think back carefully to what they packed. If it wasn’t a range of aircraft including Boeing 747s and 767s, Airbuses of various specifications, some Embraer E-Jets and a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, together with a little over 400 bewildered crew and passengers, bawling infants and a good half dozen seriously wrathful would-be terrorists – but that’s what you find there – then we urge you to get in touch. It’s possible we can exchange them for your toothbrush and copy of Matter by Iain M. Banks.
“Not likely. But it is possible.”
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