Originally Posted by
Dave_C
Very interesting post, but from what I understand, BA at T5 is the only airport, and the only terminal in the world that operates this system? We've had T5 for roughly 15 years now and it hasn't even been adopted in T3. Why? If it's so amazing and great at improving the operational efficiency surely someone else would have taken the idea and used it elsewhere? In fifteen years? No?
But then, as you say, we’ve had it for 15 years and it’s never been discontinued. Surely if Ba were bleeding money due to conformance as suggested in the op and we all agree Ba “bean counters” are fierce, they would have pushed to discontinue it?
T5 is different from T3 and most other terminals in the world. It’s single airline, quite large, and Ba has a close relationship with Hal which manage security. There are some single airline terminals on the us and Australia but I don’t think conformance would be in the culture there and no single airline has strong links to tsa. I’m Europe, even cdg 2f and 2e are multi airlines so I suspect it would be harder to get multiple airlines to agree on something like conformance. Most other major airports are multi airlines and/or interconnected across terminals in at mad t4 might be the exception but there for instance, pax can then leave the terminal on their own (without trick) as is the case at cdg so I guess having pax “trapped” landside and needing es prying our is less of an issue.
having said that, I was not suggesting conformance is “better” than alternatives, just explaining the rationale behind it and that it has distinct advantages even though it also has downsides notably in terms of rigidity.