Originally Posted by
OPebble
Got to T5 about 11:30 this am and entered from the valet parking area. As far as I could see there wasn't a single Fast Bag Drop staffed in the South End and of course the First checkin was heaving with all the F's and Golds queueing right back to reception! Given the size of T5 why aren't both ends staffed?
South Security had Fast Track open and being vetted but as usual the queues were horrendous and the goons weren't allowing people to duck under the elastic to get to the other two machines.
The south end of the building is not open on Zone H which is why you possibly thought there were not many desks. Zone G is for groups and tends to be quite quiet as well. That combines to give the South end an empty feel at certain times of day (it only takes one Spanish school group to change that
). There are not enough staff at certain times of day because of the delay in pulling all of the flights out of T4. Basically the shift mixes are not quite right. It will get better when the next switch happens in about 6 weeks, but until then there are not enough staff to increase the hosting and desk levels at certain times of the day. That coupled with a fair amount of new staff and the transaction times can drag, we are doing everything we can to make the peaks as smooth as possible and I hate it when it spoils peoples impression of T5.