Heathrow Terminal 5 was a massive construction project that was expected to cost £4.2 billion and take nearly a decade to complete. The new terminal was designed to be Europe's largest building site and airport terminal, housing all of British Airways' Heathrow operations and increasing Heathrow airport's overall passenger capacity by 30 million annually. However, the opening of Terminal 5 in 2008 faced significant issues that left many passengers unhappy with their experience.

1. Heathrow Terminal 5 Brilliant idea or absolute disaster? S.Rackley (Apr 2008)

4. Terminal 5 was expected to cost £4.2 billion. It was 'on schedule and under budget,‘ Work began on the project in Sept 2002. It is expected to take until 2011 before all phases of the project are completed. T5 is currently Europe's largest building site, employing some 6500 people. A fully-laden lorry enters the site every 31 seconds. The T5 building site is so big that two rivers have had to be diverted. The main building (or T5A) is 400m long, 180m wide and 43m high - the same height as Tower Bridge. The total area covered by T5 is 265-hectare - the equivalent size of 50 football pitches - as large as London's Hyde Park or 4 times as big as Terminal 4. The British Airways' Club lounge alone will take up two of those football pitches T5 will contain 105 lifts, 65 escalators and use 80,000 tonnes of steel - with 17,000 tonnes in the roof of T5A alone. 13.5km of tunnels connect it to the Piccadilly line and Heathrow Express. T5 will have 120 retail outlets - including a Cartier, Caviar House, Boss, Bally, Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Tie Rack. It will have 150 check in desks It will also have 12000 new airport parking spaces, including staff car parking. T5 will house BA's entire Heathrow operations - around 550 flights a day. Cost savings (and staff cuts) of up to 20% are expected for the airline. T5 will allow Heathrow to take an extra 30 million passengers annually, over and above the 70 million it currently deals with.

5. What do you think “integrated transport” means?

7. Benefits! Jobs created! – (how? what? direct? indirect?) Construction work (when? temporary?) More consumer choice (of what?) Business relocation to the area (why?) Other benefits (what do you think?)

8. Drawbacks! More noise pollution (from what?) More fuel pollution (from what?) Road congestion (to with roads?) Encourage more air travel (why bad?) Threatens London’s Green Belt (how? who will want to build near Heathrow?) Other drawbacks (what do you think?)

10. EXCITEMENT AS T5 OPENS!!!

11. but..uh oh… … here’s what a couple of passengers think of this.. (The T5 song)…. PLAY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3bNlBi-Iw

12. but..uh oh… … here’s what a couple of passengers think of this.. (The T5 song) T5 BEFORE & AFTER (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/video/162000/bb/162324_16x9_bb.asx?ad=1&ct=50

13. GeoActive (151) Using the sheet In groups of 8: Use the worksheet and Q11, then do Q12. Some guidelines: For your role think – 1) Why do you care about Heathrow? - 2) What is your point of view? Good? Bad? Depends? - 3) Why do you think this? - 4) What statistics back you up? - 5) Will you be happy, upset, angry etc about T5?

14. Links http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7353582.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/video/162000/bb/162324_16x9_bb.asx?ad=1&ct=50 http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/video/161000/bb/161885_16x9_bb.asx?ad=1&ct=50 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3bNlBi-Iw