{"id":473,"date":"2008-09-21T20:43:52","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T00:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=473"},"modified":"2026-01-02T15:17:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T23:17:50","slug":"british-airways-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"British Airways – UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following entry is a record in the \u201cCatalogue of Catastrophe<\/span><\/a>\u201d –\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world.<\/p>\n

\n

British Airways PLC. \/ British Airports Authority
\nProject: <\/strong>Move of operations into Heathrow Terminal 5
\nDate:<\/strong> Apr 2008
\nCost: <\/strong>$32M USD<\/p>\n

Synopsis :<\/strong>
\nOpening of Heathrow Terminal 5 labeled a fiasco after 28,000 bags get lost and hundreds of flights are cancelled.\u00a0 Problems resulted in British Airways having to cease accepting passengers with\u00a0bags to check-in while a backlog of thousands of passengers built up in the terminal.\u00a0 Problems persisted for more than a week drawing attention of the media from around the world.\u00a0 Top British Airways executives forced to resign following the debacle and\u00a0CEO Willie Walsh summed up events with the phrase\u00a0“not our finest hour\u201d<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Contributing factors as reported in the press :
\n<\/strong>Lack of staff training, poor staff morale resulting in failure to secure enough staff to effectively manage problems as they arose, programming errors in the baggage system, failure to test the system with realistic loads.<\/p>\n

Related story :<\/strong>
\nRead a full case study covering the saga of Denver International Airport`s<\/a> baggage handling system.<\/p>\n

Reference links :<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 28,000 bags caught in T5 foul-up<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  2. T5 chaos \u2018not BA\u2019s finest hour\u2019 <\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  3. What went wrong at Heathrow’s Terminal 5?<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. The BA Terminal 5 song (very funny)<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. BBC News video<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Following entry is a record in the \u201cCatalogue of Catastrophe\u201d –\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world. British Airways PLC. \/ British Airports Authority Project: Move of operations into Heathrow Terminal 5 Date: Apr 2008 Cost: $32M USD Synopsis : Opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 labeled a fiasco after 28,000 bags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[132,129,93,147],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private-sector","category-failed-project","tag-private-sector","tag-failed-project","tag-why-do-projects-fail","tag-why-projects-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9901,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/9901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}