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.
