Airport: BAA Heathrow Airport
Address: 234 Bath Road, Hayes, Middlesex, UB3 5AP
General Enquiries: +44 (0)870 000 0123
Travel Details: Heathrow Airport is 15 miles west of central London and accessible from the M4 and M25 motorways. Terminal 1 is at the centre of the airport site, next to Terminals 2 and 3. Terminal 4 is at the South of the site, approximately 15 minutes from the heart of Heathrow Airport. Heathrow Airport Transfer should take between one hour (off peak) and two hours (peak) to central London. Your Heathrow Airport taxi will pick up from the information desk in the Heathrow airport terminal at which you are landing.
Book a Heathrow Airport Transfer now. London Heathrow Airport Business Facilities
Business travellers can find dedicated lounges in all Heathrow terminals. Executive lounges in Terminals 1-3 are run by Servisair, whilst T4 has the Holideck lounge, maintained by KLM. Here, passengers will find three levels of facilities for entertainment and relaxation. In addition, there are some airline specific lounges in Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Heathrow’s business lounges serve a large selection refreshments, along with work zones complete with telephone and internet connections.
London Heathrow also offers Fast Track travel arrangements for business class flyers. The Fast Track service offers dedicated parking, duty free shopping, and priority passport control. Your travel agent should be able to provide you will full details of this service.
Heathrow Airport History
London Heathrow Airport began as a tiny airstrip, built on grass. Towards the end of the Second World War, in 1944, Heathrow Airport was acquired by the British Government to be used as a base for the RAF – however, during the development of the site, the war ended. This led to the possibility of Heathrow being developed with commercial aviation in mind. A large airport was required to serve the rapidly expanding London population, and Heathrow airport was ideal. By the late 1940s, three runways were built – and at the beginning of the 1950s, a new terminal building was opened.
With increasing passenger numbers, Terminal 2 was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1955, followed by Terminal 3, and then in 1968, Terminal 1. Terminal 4 was opened in 1986. Today London Heathrow Airport has excellent links to London and the rest of the UK, via rail and road.
Heathrow Terminals
Terminal 1Terminal 1 was opened in 1968 and was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II in May 1969. In 2005, a substantial redesign and redevelopment of Terminal 1 was completed, which saw the opening of the new Eastern Extension, doubling the departure lounge in size and creating additional seating and retail space. Terminal 1 handles most of Heathrow’s domestic and Irish routes along with some long haul routes and European routes.
Terminal 2Terminal 2 is Heathrow’s oldest terminal and was opened as the Europa Building in 1955. Terminal 2, as well as the adjacent Queens Building, will close in 2008 after the opening of Terminal 5, to allow for the construction of the new Heathrow East terminal. Terminal 2 handles mainly European routes.
Terminal 3Terminal 3 was opened as The Oceanic Terminal on 13 November 1961 to handle flight departures for long-haul routes. At this time the airport had a direct helicopter service to Central London from the gardens on the roof of the terminal building. The Oceanic Terminal was renamed as Terminal 3 in 1968 and was expanded in 1970 with the addition of an arrivals building. Other facilities were also added, including the UK’s first moving walkways. In 2006, the new £105 million Pier 6 was completed in order to accommodate the Airbus A-380 superjumbo; Singapore Airlines now operate regular flights from Terminal 3 using the Airbus A380.Redevelopment of Terminal 3’s forecourt by the addition of a new four lane drop-off area and a large pedestrianised plaza, complete with canopy to the front of the terminal building was completed in 2007; these improvements were intended to improve passengers’ experiences, reduce traffic congestion and improve security. BAA also have plans for a £1bn upgrade of the rest of the terminal over the next ten years.
Terminal 4Terminal 4 was constructed to the south of the southern runway next to the existing cargo terminal, away from the three older terminals, and was connected with Terminals 1, 2 and 3 by the already-existing Heathrow cargo tunnel. Terminal 4 was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in April 1986, and became the home for then newly-privatised British Airways.Terminal 4 will also benefit from a major upgrade to its existing facilities once Terminal 5 has opened. BAA have stated that the building is in need of extensive refurbishment. As part of the redevelopment of Terminal 4, the amount of natural light entering the building will be assessed and the check-in facilities and airside departure lounge will also be upgraded.
Terminal 5The possibility of a fifth terminal at Heathrow emerged as early as 1982, when there was debate over whether the expansion of Stansted or the expansion of Heathrow (advocated by BA) was the way forward for the UK aviation industry. Richard Rogers was selected to design the terminal in 1989 and BAA formally announced its proposal for T5 in May 1992, submitting a formal planning application on 17 February 1993. A public inquiry into the proposals began on 16 May 1995 and lasted nearly four years, finally ending after 525 days on 17 March 1999. Finally on 20 November 2001, more than eight years after the initial planning application, then-transport minister Stephen Byers announced the British government’s decision to grant planning permission for the building of a fifth passenger terminal at Heathrow.
Terminal 5 under construction in July 2006
The new terminal was built on the western side of the airport on the site of the former Perry Oaks sewage works, between the northern and southern runways. The four storeys of the main terminal building (Concourse A) are covered by a single-span undulating steel frame roof, stretching 90 metres (295 ft) from east to west. In addition to the main terminal building, Terminal 5 also has two satellite buildings, linked to the main terminal by an underground people mover transit system. The first satellite (Concourse B) includes dedicated aircraft stands for the Airbus A380; Concourse C is currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2010. In total, Terminal 5 has 60 aircraft stands, and is connected to Terminals 1, 2 and 3 by the Heathrow Airside Road Tunnel. There are more than 100 shops and restaurants.
Terminal 5’s total cost is £4.3 billion. It will cater for 30 million passengers annually and will enable Heathrow to handle up to 90 million passengers a year, up from its current figure of 68 million (compared with a design capacity of 45 million). In 2005, Terminal 5 was the largest construction project in Europe – over 80,000 people will have worked on the project, with expenditure peaking at £12 million per week.
The transport network around the airport has been extended to cope with the increase in passenger numbers. A dedicated motorway spur has been built from the M25 between junctions 14 and 15 to the terminal, which includes a 4,000 space multi-storey car park. A more distant long-stay car park for business passengers will be linked to the terminal by a personal rapid transit system, which will open in 2009. New branches of both the Heathrow Express and the Underground’s Piccadilly Line will serve a new shared Heathrow Terminal 5 station, which will also have space for a third pair of tracks for future additional rail services. BAA are currently consulting on the route of a new rail link, called Heathrow Airtrack, to Staines High Street and through direct services to Reading, Guildford and London Waterloo.
Terminal 5 interior
Queen Elizabeth II officially opened Terminal 5 in a ceremony on 14 March 2008. The first flights to and from Terminal 5 occured on 27 March 2008. The first flight to use the terminal was British Airways flight 26 from Hong Kong. Flight 302 to Paris was the first flight departure from Terminal 5 at 06:20 GMT.On the day of the terminal opening, British Airways cancelled 34 flights due to “teething problems” and was later forced to suspend passenger check-in. A malfunction in the new high-tech baggage handling system meant that flights had taken off with no bags and people were facing delays of up to 4 hours waiting for their baggage. On Thursday 27 March and Friday 28 March, 100 flights were cancelled whilst delays continued for a third day on the following Saturday.
The Queen has declared Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 ready for business, hailing it “as a 21st Century gateway to Britain”.The Queen has declared Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 ready for business, hailing it “as a 21st Century gateway to Britain”.
Heathrow East TerminalBAA announced in November 2005 that when Terminal 5 opens Terminal 2 will be closed to allow the Heathrow East scheme to be built. This will see Terminal 2 and the Queen’s Building offices being replaced by a new terminal capable of handling 30 million people, five million fewer than Terminals 1 and 2 are currently used by, although considerably more than the design capacity of the existing buildings. Work is planned to start in 2008 and to be completed by 2012, in time for the London Olympics, although reported delays are making this target unlikely. The plan envisages the complete realignment of piers more logically, the building of new ones on the now defunct cross-wind runway, and to provide for an increase in capacity, in a site taking up roughly the same amount of space as T5. The entire project is set to cost £1-1.5bn. Planning permission was granted in May 2007 on condition that the project meets a number of ‘green’ targets.
North TerminalThe current proposals for a third runway to the north of the current airport includes an additional terminal. Although currently referred to as “Terminal 6” by the time it could be built Terminals 1 and 2 would have been replaced by the East Terminal making it a possible fifth terminal overall.