orbitmic

1) For me the worst is the transfer experience. It is still very poor especially for "fast track" passengers. The British requirement for higher checks on transit passengers is entirely absurd: even the worst possible checks at the origin airport could not possibly make you "more" risky than someone who has not been through any check at all as they are coming straight from the streets of London or wherever. However, even assuming that BA and HAL are not gifted enough at lobbying to change that ridiculous rule, then they should deploy resources differently because fast track connections is systematically slower than regular (non-fast-track) O/D so then just open more fast track connection lanes to ensure that fast track gets faster security than non-fast track;

2) Fully agree with the gate announcements. That is unjustifiable and undoubtedly more related to ensuring passengers spend more time stuck in areas with shops rather than wait in the gate areas where they cannot spend money. That we know because some airports which used to advertise gates much earlier are now withholding gate announcements for that very reason.

3) Build semi contact gates (ie you walk to the plane) on the sides of the A gates with covered and heated walkways to minimise bus boarding/deboarding and if possible increase the number of positions there. Short haul flights arriving at/leaving from B/C gates used to be the exception, now I get them in at least 30% of my non domestic short haul flights and that is not only a source of frustration to many but often a source of delays as B/C gates for short haul flights are not often only mentioned 50 minutes before departure or less and many occasional flyers do not know their way.

4) Rethink bus gate boarding areas so that all bus gates board/deboard from the A terminal. Many other airports do that better

5) Rethink arrivals circuits so that gates A1-7 can be used as both domestic/international without a need to use a bus. Many airports have now successfully implemented mixed gates which enable you to channel people to/from as either domestic or international and it's time for HAL to look at what their competitors do in that regard.

6) North/South A walks have not been well thought through. No travellators for elderly people and the space is narrow and cluttered so you always have to slalom between people. Compare to what you have in, say, HKG.

7) In 5C, a number of gate indications are plainly wrong, ie the indicated direction to some gates does not point to the shortest route to them. Again, I suspect that this is about making people walk past shops and that is not a good enough reason.

8) Arrivals is MUCH better than before especially for those of us who can use machines, but still hit and miss.

9) As pointed by others, lounge showers and bathrooms are really poor - in every BA lounge. Inspiration from QF and CX (or if one can dream, in the CCR from the La Premiere lounge) would go a long way into making the lounge experience much better for transit passengers arriving from a long haul flight and wanting to shower. The current setting is just not up to competitors' standards.

10) Build a second CCR at the C gates.

11) If BA are going to continue having operations from T5 and T3, rethink the link between the two. It is still very much hit and miss especially when transferring into T3 (as opposed to the other way round) where connection security queues are often really long and fast track lane frequently not enforced with people from the other lane waived in the fast track queue.

That would be a good start I think... The point is, both CDG and FRA (the two main competitors) have improved a lot recently especially for transfer passengers. LHR T5 has got rather a bit worse instead even though it was starting from a much better place originally. Smaller airports like ZRH, AMS, etc are typically better than all of the above.