London Heathrow's Terminal 5 opened in March. Business Traveller offers a guided tour of the city's most talked about transport hub.

You waited years for anything to change at Heathrow, and then it all happened in the space of a few days. On March 27, 2008 Terminal 5 opened, most British Airways flights moved over to the new terminal, and there was a reorganisation of airlines among the remaining terminals. Then four days later, Open Skies began, a development which saw yet more new services including Air France/KLM flying direct from Heathrow to Los Angeles.

While the teething problems as with any new airport, hotel and even restaurant around the world, are being ironed out, in the following pages, we present information designed to make the transfer as painless as possible.

HEATHROW T5B AND T5C

Terminal 5 consists of the main building plus two satellite terminals, 5B and 5C.

T5B opened at the same time as the main building, while the £300 million (US$586.3 million) Terminal C will open in 2010.

T5B has 16 gates, one lounge and a number of shops, restaurants and cafés including HMV, Caviar House and Prunier and the main JD Wetherspoon pub. The 465-seat Galleries Club lounge, for First, Club World and Club Europe passengers, and Gold and Silver Executive Club members, has the same features as the Galleries lounge in T5A except for the cinema.

T5A is connected to the satellite terminals via a track transit system, which can shuttle up to 6,500 people per hour on underground driverless trains or “automated people movers”, which run every 90 seconds. The journey time to T5B is around 45 seconds, so journey time between the two terminal buildings is about five minutes.

T5C will be roughly the same size as T5B and will be built by engineering company Carillion to increase gate capacity at the terminal.

Concourse 5B primarily serves international flights and includes dedicated aircraft stands for the Airbus A380.

T5'S ON-SITE HOTEL

Sofitel’s second UK on-airport hotel (the other being the Sofitel Gatwick) is due to open in June this year. Attached to the new terminal by a covered walkbridge, the 607-room Sofitel London Heathrow is already taking bookings for many of its 41 functions rooms, with “mid-scale” events planned for July and August, scaling up to major functions from September.

Central to the project is The Avenue, a 187-metre internal boulevard off which the hotel’s retail outlets and eateries will be located, including a tea lounge (Tea 5, obviously). Most of the facilities at T5 will be located airside, so Sofitel will hope to cash in on informal business meetings and lunches at the hotel. The property will also house a theme bar called Sphere, as well as the 100-seat fine-dining restaurant Brasserie Roux, which also appears in the Sofitel St James London.

The Avenue will also connect the property’s five atria, which in turn split the hotel into six blocks. Blocks five and six will be reserved for the hotel’s suites, where there will also be a prestige check-in area and executive lounge. There will be a total of 21 separate check-in points throughout the hotel, and all rooms in the property will have triple glazing.

The 201 Classic Rooms at the hotel will measure 26sqm, with a further 188 Superior Rooms at 28sqm, 164 Luxury Rooms and 52 suites of varying sizes.

Luxury categories and above will benefit from two-metre beds, while all rooms will have a separate bath and shower (Luxury Rooms and suites have TVs in the bathrooms), Wi-Fi internet access and flat-screen TVs into which guests can plug MP3 players and laptops.

Interiors have been designed by KCA, whose previous clients include the Four Seasons Hongkong.

Many of the rooms will look onto internal atria, and Sofitel has made showpieces of several of these areas, including a Zen garden. The hotel will also offer some of the most comprehensive meetings and events facilities in Europe, with function rooms ranging from a 117-seat theatre to the 2,000-capacity Arora Suite, and car parking for 400 delegates.

Meanwhile, Travelodge has recently opened a 295-room property just west of the new terminal and Hilton will follow suit in 2010.

SHOPPING

BAA is often accused of confusing airports with shopping malls, and T5 is no exception. There are 112 shops including the first Tiffany & Co. in a European airport and Paul Smith’s Globe, offering travel-related products and one-off pieces from around the world.

Other luxury outlets include Bvlgari, Gucci, Christian Dior, Cigar House, Harrods (upper departures with an all-white new look), Kurt Geiger, Links of London, Mappin and Webb, Montblanc, Mulberry, Prada, Reiss, Smythson and Thomas Pink (where you can drink pink water and watch the latest FTSE news) and World Duty Free.

At the functional end of the scale, the usual retailers are also represented, they include Boots, Dixons and WHSmith (with new self-service tills). 

FOOD AND DRINK

There are 23 different restaurants and bars including sandwich “boutique” Apostrophe, sushi-specialist Itsu, which offers a takeaway service for inflight eating, and Soho patisserie Amato, where cakes can be baked on-request ready for your return.

There’s also noodle chain Wagamama (offering exclusive T5 breakfasts such as coconut cream porridge), Carluccio’s (before security), Caviar House and Prunier Seafood Bar, The 5 Tuns Pub and Kitchen, and V-Bar.

But what everyone is talking about is Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food, which is rumoured to have cost the him £2 million (US$3.9 million). The 180-seat restaurant, situated airside with views of the runway, will have a menu based on that of the Michelin-starred chef’s Boxwood Café in Knightsbridge, offering dishes such as butternut squash risotto with Parmesan and amaretti and treacle-cured bacon and maple syrup, and a full range of wines by the bottle or the glass.

Although it will be full service and you should book ahead, as the name suggests Plane Food has been adapted for the airport, so passengers in a rush can choose from a time-guarantee menu. Alternatively, afternoon tea or cocktails are available at the bar.

GETTING AIRSIDE

Ten minutes from the terminal entrance to the other side of security? That’s the average time British Airways (BA) claims it will take passengers to get airside at T5, thanks to a combination of new technology and an innovative processing system.

CHECK-IN

According to BA, online check-in and 96 self-service kiosks arranged in small clusters will account for 80 percent of passengers, and staff will be on hand to sort out problems. Check-in will close 45 minutes before departure (one hour for online check-in), and passengers arriving early will be offered the option of an earlier flight (subject to availability).  

Behind the self-service kiosks is a line of manned fast bag-drop points. BA says passengers will never have more than one other person in front of them at either the self-service kiosks or the bag-drop points, and claims that checking luggage should only take 90 seconds.

At the back of the landside area are 54 customer-service desks. If you have problems using the self-service kiosks, or are taking excess baggage, you’ll have to check in here – however, this may be a lengthy process, as these desks will also handle ticket sales, flight changes and other customer queries. There will be premium desks in this area, but otherwise there are no premium services except for a private check-in area at the south end of the terminal for First Class and Gold card passengers.

As BA is the only carrier at T5, passengers can check in anywhere, but premium customers will probably gravitate towards the south of the building, where most of the lounges are situated. The exception will be those heading for the domestic/short-haul lounge, which is located at the north end, or those flying from satellite building T5B.

PASSPORT & VISA CHECKS

If you’re flying long haul or to Moscow, St Petersburg, Prague or Kiev, and you’ve checked in online or at a kiosk at the terminal, you will need to go to one of the Passport and Visa Check desks before going to security.

If you have luggage for the hold, your passport and visa will be checked at a fast bag-drop or customer-service desk.

SECURITY

There are two security areas, with 14 lanes in the north zone (where the public transport links emerge) and four in the south, including fast-track lanes at each end. 

The security conveyor belts now have two exits – one for possessions which have passed the check, and the other for baggage requiring examination – to avoid queues of trays (and therefore people) stacking up. The trays will also be on an automatic-return system.

Before security, passengers for domestic flights will be fingerprinted and photographed. This is to enable domestic and international passengers to use the same facilities airside, while preventing them swapping documents to evade immigration controls. The data will then be checked at the boarding gate, and destroyed within 24 hours. The system was trialled at T1 during February and March, and according to BAA has worked well.

FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT T5

1. It is the largest free-standing building in the UK, covering the same area as Hyde Park. There is enough glass to reach from T5 to Buckingham Palace.
2. It will be the first terminal in the UK not to sell fast food. A recent fire at a Heathrow Burger King was caused by a build-up of fat in the extractors, so frying equipment has been banned.
3. It has the second-longest escalator in the UK, leading down to the transit system which connects T5A and T5B. (The longest is at Angel tube station on the Northern line.)
4. The site was previously occupied by the Perry Oaks sludge works, a sewage-processing plant.
5. The archaeological recovery project on the T5 site is the largest-ever in the UK. So far, over 80,000 artefacts have been found, including pottery, worked flint and a hand-axe from 3,000BC.
   
   

GETTING THERE

Terminal 5 is on the Western Perimeter Road off junction 14 of the M25. For travellers who use the M4, exit at junction 4B and follow the M25 south to junction 14. In general, it may take a little longer to reach T5 than the other terminals, so travellers are advised to take this into account.

BY TRAIN

Four Heathrow Express trains an hour run from London Paddington to T5 with one stop at T1, 2 and 3 (total journey time is 19 minutes). Passengers taking the Heathrow Express to Terminal 4 must now change at T1, 2, 3 and wait for a shuttle link (every 15 minutes) to T4.

Heathrow Connect (the stopping service from Paddington) will not serve T5, but will continue to call first at T1, 2, 3 before continuing to T4.

TO/FROM CENTRAL LONDON BY TUBE

T5 has its own underground station on the Piccadilly line in Zone 6. The station will have six platforms – two for the Heathrow Express, two for the Piccadilly line, and two which are built in advance of a potential link from Heathrow by rail to the west.

During normal hours, there are now six Piccadilly line trains an hour from central London to T5. These call en route at T1, 2, 3 (but not T4 as this terminal is being served separately). T4 also gets six trains an hour, while T1, 2, 3 has 12 an hour.

There are 10 lifts (which can hold 50 people) at the station, which go straight to the departures level at the terminal.

BY BUS

Terminal 5’s bus and coach station is on the arrivals level, across the Interchange Plaza from the main terminal building. Operators will include National Express, which covers the whole country, Rail Air, which has services from T5 to Woking, Watford and Reading to connect with train services across the country, as well as Oxford Bus Company’s The Airline, with a journey time of around 80 minutes to T5 from Oxford. The Airline stopped its service to Terminal 4 from March 23, to travel to T5 instead.

Coach services will still go from the central bus station, which is next to the tube station for T1, 2, 3 (from T5, get the Heathrow Express free to T1, 2, 3). During the night, the N97 bus connects Heathrow to central London every 30 minutes.

National Express also operates Dot2Dot, a shuttle service between Heathrow (and Gatwick) and central London addresses for £25 (US$49) per person. It has recently extended its service to include Canary Wharf.

The shuttles use express bus lanes to avoid London traffic and each vehicle receives live traffic data to avoid disruption. At T5, the kiosk is the second desk on the right as you come out of arrivals.

It’s worth noting that the T5 service is a direct service between the airport and central London and Canary Wharf (whereas services from T1, 2, 3 and 4 sometimes make stops at each terminal to pick up more customers).

For more information see oxfordbus.co.uk, nationalexpress.com, tfl.gov.uk, railair.com, terminal5.ba.com, dot2.com