Originally Posted by
pbarnette
When was the last time you flew through LHR? I think T5, taken alone, is the best airport in Europe, and I'm not sure it is close. The facility itself is really nice, and it has fantastic lounges, shopping, and dining. It is logical and, frankly, pretty well set up for connections. They open the third concourse very soon, and there is the potential for a fourth, which would possibly allow them to consolidate the few destinations flown out of T3, which, while not my favorite, really isn't THAT bad. LHR does have some operational challenges, but they are manageable enough, considering that it is the most valuable O/D market in Europe and in a great position for routing TATL flows. MAD is a nice compliment, and another first-rate facility.
LHR T5 is sure fancy, but unless they can integrate all of OW there, it makes for horrible connections between alliance carriers. Don't forget that BA has some destinations that are only served from LGW and not LHR, potentially generating the dreaded LGW-LHR (or vice versa) transfer.
LHR also suffers from an insufficient number of runways and an inability to build any more. Despite really being four (eventually five when the new T2 opens) separate airports, it only has three runways, which is woefully insufficient. It came to an absolute standstill with two inches of snow in December because its Spanish operators (the newspapers will not refer to a mess at LHR without prefixing those two words) BAA are woefully inept. The situation inside the terminals was described as resembling a third world country with overflowing wastebins and people everywhere. BAA kept the media out and forbid passengers stranded there from taking photographs.