corporate-wage-slave

Avid followers of this thread will be aware that departing passengers using the Transit - Transit Track System (TTS) to give the formal name - have had issues recently, with both escalators being out of use, and the lifts getting very congested.

This was caused by long term repair work going on at the same time as a fault developing on the second escalator - thus stopping escalator access and the only access is via the lifts. Crew and ground staff are also being held up by this. It also means some gates are opening late and thus the Flight Information Display System (FIDS) may show "Will board from B gates" for longer than normal.



What HAL have done is put three queue lanes for the 3 lifts, and staff are feeding people through the queues to maximise lift content and stop people barging on, so the lift doors can close efficiently. It's adding a bit of time to the process. On Saturday they also ran some buses. Now if there was congestion on a relatively quiet weekend and Monday, I'm not sure how this is going to work out later in the week.

So my advice is to check your app and the FIDS around 60 to 75 minutes to departure to see if you are B or C and not hang around if B / C are showing. If in the lounges the message is different and typically says "boarding now" but only once the gate is identified, which is later in the process. Ask the front desk staff if you have any doubts. Gates normally close 20 minutes to departure, so at around 45 minutes before departure you should be clear where you should be heading.

The good news is that I saw both escalators working today at least in test mode, so one should be back soon, and the longer repair hopefully will be expedited too.

VSLover

i saw this on sunday afternoon when i was crossing above one level towards A9 and figured both escalators were out of service with the three channels set up for the lifts and i, for once was hopeful for A10 on my LHR-SFO flight this week lol. of course recent luck will prove we depart from a C gate and one of the two lifts will not be functional.

corporate-wage-slave

Both escalators are still out of service. Today is expected to be busier (there again, a number of flights have been cancelled) so the bus service will run from A10 gate E to the B terminal as an alternative to the lifts and TTS / transit.

crazy8534

I was thinking about this and I suppose, as escalators go, it is actually a pretty tall/long one.
I can't imagine they would be taking any longer than they absolutely need to for this....

Professor Yaffle

If the escalators are broken, surely they just become stairs?!

zaphod424

This was my thought, surely they could have just left the second faulty escalator open for people to walk down, not ideal if you have a roll on, but anyone with just a rucksack or handbag as carry on would walk downn the escalator so it would drastically reduce lift queues

CatchThePigeon

I expect the length of the escalator is too long for it to be considered safe to be used as normal stairs. If one person stumbled it could cause a serious accident.

But yes, if I could have used them as stairs I would have liked to do so.

corporate-wage-slave

Indeed I'm told this was considered, but it's a huge escalator and there are engineers working on the long term repair escalator with equipment and screens at each end. So with current hand baggage trends I can see this is a step (!) too far from a safety perspective.

zaphod424

But if one person stumbled with them working it could also cause an accident, if they were deemed too long to be safe to walk down then they'd have split them in two with a mezzanine level. And I've seen the escalators at Angel tube be broken so you had to walk down, which are the longest in the UK and far longer than the ones in T5, with no safety concerns.

crazy8534

What we need is a slide.

KARFA

cws, in a post before you mentioned the possibility of a set of stairs being made available. Surely this would be preferable?

I am guessing there must be stairs down to -2 and -4, but I can't picture where they are - I assume they are back of house as it were.

corporate-wage-slave

No, I couldn't work it out either, but I was told they stopped the idea quickly - I can see it would be operationally difficult since presumably it would use areas not in public use.

districtRich

Escalators usually have a higher step height than normal stairs. This may not seem like an issue, but this is why walking up or down an escalator feels quite different than a normal flight of stairs. It may seem simple that a broken escalator is just a set of steps, but it's not a standard step height for many people to use naturally, especially on a long length.

krispy84

My thoughts exactly when using the stopped escalators as stairs was mentioned up thread. It’s one thing doing it in extremis just after the break-down, or if there is no alternative. But quite different planning it for a longer period.

Genius1

Angel's are only a little over 5m longer than the T5 TTS escalators. 27m versus 22m.