News

Have you seen Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil? If not, you really should.

Or you could just visit Heathrow, which is Gilliam's version of high-tech entropy in practice: once-shining corners lost in gloom, hoses dripping from the ceiling like intestines from a belly wound, hordes of angry, resigned travellers carrying smelly shoes in one hand, a clear bag filled with intimate grooming products in the other.

“Wow,” said a friend after navigating Heathrow's dim, congested corridors for the first time in 20 years. “That place is really a pit.”

For several years, the four terminals of the world's busiest international airport have operated far beyond capacity: Designed to accommodate 45 million passengers a year, they now funnel 68 million through their scuffed halls.

Airport officials acknowledge that there is no breathing room in the system. When something goes wrong – as it did last month when the computerized baggage system collapsed, leaving thousands of travellers stranded with no luggage – there's a domino effect of woe.

Until now, that is. Heathrow's controversial new Terminal 5, which opens to passengers on Thursday, is supposed to put a shiny gloss on the airport's reputation by relieving some of that congestion. The fat lady hasn't lost weight, but she has bought a bigger dress.

And a very beautiful dress it is. The new terminal, designed by Richard Rogers' architecture firm, is the vast, airy, light-filled opposite of the other four.

The point is for British Airways passengers – BA is the sole tenant of the new terminal – to feel every pence of the £4.3-billion expenditure.

The price tag includes Italian stone floors and 100 trees planted in strategic spots. A 30-metre-wide concourse runs the length of the primary building, bounded by soaring walls made up of 30,000 square metres of glass.

From one of those windows, you can catch a glimpse of a more dumpy building, Windsor Castle (which must also mean that her Highness can look up from her breakfast to see the 7 a.m. to Tenerife). Last week, only a day after an intruder with a backpack rushed onto one of Heathrow's runways, the Queen officially opened the new terminal, calling it “a 21st-century gateway to Britain.”

One hesitates to suggest the Queen is “on message,” but that phrase is echoed over and over by officials from British Airways and from BAA, the financially troubled company that runs Heathrow.

“We think this is our chance to put convenience and pleasure back into flying, but also to show off Heathrow as a gateway to the world,” says British Airways' David Noyes.

But that gateway won't be fixed with a little WD-40 and a spot of paint. Last year, a survey of 500 travel professionals named Heathrow the worst airport in the world, citing the lengthy security queues and the long distances travellers are forced to walk. Last month, the Association of European Airlines reported that Heathrow had more late flights than any major airport on the continent, with 36 per cent of flights delayed in 2007.

To stem the flood of discontent, BAA has erected a barrier of numbers: Terminal 5, it says, is large enough to contain five soccer pitches and can serve up to 30 million passengers a year. Some 15,000 volunteers were recruited to conduct 66 tests of the building's readiness for action. There are 60 stands for aircrafts, three children's playrooms and 9,140 seats.

Seventeen kilometres of belts, meanwhile, will carry baggage, unmolested, into travellers' calm hands. There are also 96 check-in stands and 90 fast-bag drops, which officials say will mean passengers with only one bag can make it from the front door through security in 10 minutes. “Premium” customers are offered an even faster check-in – plus the use of six luxury lounges, where they can receive spa treatments or look at art by Damian Hirst.

But there are other, more contentious numbers: £20 just to drop someone off at the airport, for example, which is the fee BAA is reportedly seeking if another runway is built; four, which is the number of fingerprints that travellers will be required to give at security (the data will be destroyed after 24 hours in accordance with British law); and 20, the percentage of people who will need to travel by bus from the terminal to their gates.

The most controversial number of all, though, is three. The proposed third runway at Heathrow, currently under review by the British government, has generated a groundswell of opposition from green campaigners, local groups whose neighbourhoods would be razed (or at least made much noisier) and from politicians sensitive to the grumbling of constituents.

Last year, environmental groups erected a Camp for Climate Action at the edge of Heathrow to encourage resistance to the airport's expansion. BAA sought injunctions to get rid of the protesters, which only generated more publicity for their cause.

The airport's operators insist a new runway is necessary for an airport operating at full capacity, and that having only two makes Heathrow the runt of the aviation playground. BAA's chairman, Nigel Rudd, went on BBC radio to defend the controversial expansion, noting that Amsterdam's Schiphol has six runways, Charles de Gaulle in Paris has four and Frankfurt three.

In response, groups such as Greenpeace have stepped up their fight, resorting to increasingly eye-catching stunts such as scampering around on the roofs of the Houses of Parliament, or climbing on top of a just-landed airplane at Heathrow to decorate it with a banner that read “Climate Emergency – No 3rd Runway.”

Anna Jones, a Greenpeace member who was on top of that plane, says the British government needs to look at alternatives to expansion – building up the railway infrastructure, for example, so that travellers have an efficient alternative to short-haul flights.

“We don't want to go back to the dark ages,” she says. “We just want the government to provide leadership in looking at real alternatives.”

The first Canadian visitors to Terminal 5 will be passengers on flights from Vancouver arriving on Thursday – opening day. All other intercontinental flights will arrive and depart from the new terminal as of April 30.

But will passengers humping their bags through the other four terminals notice a difference? Or will they just have to grit their teeth? Some Heathrow-watchers think the airport's reputation might take quite a while to regain altitude.

“You do wonder what overseas visitors think when they see Heathrow for the first time,” says Sue Ockwell, spokeswoman for Britain's Association of Independent Tour Operators. “It looks almost Third World, with the patches in the carpets and the leaks in the ceilings. It's certainly not a world-class airport.” The problem, she says, is a history of under-investment in crucial services.

“The other thing they haven't done is invest in staff training. What people want to see at the beginning or end of a vacation is a friendly, smiling face and you don't often get that. The environment may be grotty but people will overlook that if they've got someone friendly to help them.”

Hiring and training may be a quick solution; nothing else is simple or speedy when a project this large is involved. Terminal 5 is opening exactly 15 years after the planning application was submitted, the long delay due to the level of opposition to the expansion.

As for the rest of the airport? It's also undergoing renovations, although BAA was recently forced to back down from promises that its new Heathrow East terminal (replacing 1 and 2) would be ready in time for the London Olympics.

When visitors stream through Heathrow's older terminals in the summer of 2012, they might be facing a long, dark walk, accompanied by the sounds of hammering and drilling. And their own muttered curses.

Elizabeth Renzetti is a

correspondent in The Globe

and Mail's European bureau.