We’ve been to Heathrow Airport today to the new Terminal 5 building. The terminal opens next month and they are running trials with volunteers to test it prior to opening. We registered as volunteers a few weeks back and applied for today’s trial and had a phone call to say we’d been accepted on it. We had to be at a hotel next to Heathrow for 845am which meant getting up before 7am. The only time I normally see before 7am is when I’ve not been to bed from the night before yet (normally with Alison :lol:). We made good time and arrived at the hotel where we were parking and then walked across to the hotel the meet and greet was happening in.
Security met everyone at the door – policemen with guns, sniffer dogs to check your bags (Scarlett loved them) and full emptying bag searches. I don’t know why it hadn’t occured to me before but the trials might well have been a magnet for terrorist attacks. We were issued with ID passes to wear round our necks and a profile. We were all on a flight to Delhi and had to check in one piece of luggage each. Davies loved the idea of ‘playing’ someone else for the day, Scarlett was less keen. We had coffee and pastries and then went in for a short presentation explaining what would be happening through the day and a dvd showing us some of the building background of Terminal 5. It was all quite glossy and PR material-like. The word ‘iconic’ was used three times during in and applied to everything including the air traffic control tower 😆
We were then directed back downstairs where we boarded coaches to take us to the airport. They let us off in phases to replicate the trickle of people arriving at an airport naturally. The building is enormous, very impressive; airy, light and quite minimalisitic. There was strictly no camera or filming allowed but I notice a flickr user called terminal5insider has a huge range of pictures of the place up.
We had a play with the boarding pass printing machines and then gathered our four pieces of luggage from the pile and got a trolley. We joined a queue to check our bags in but it appeared to be unmoving with the clerk disappearing every so often and people standing around with mobile phones looking harrassed around it. Eventually we moved queues and shortly afterwards someone did come and tell the people remaining in the queue that they would need to move elsewhere – teething troubles of precisely the sort they were hoping to cope with in trials rather than when they ‘go live’. We then went through security where to the children’s great excitement both Ady and I set the alarm off as we went through the gate and had to be body searched and have the handheld beeper passed over us. Mine was a tin of vaseline in my pocket, Ady’s was his steel toecaps in his boots which he had to take off and walk back through without. My bag got pulled to one side too so I had to wait while that was emptied and then rescanned by the xray machines. We gathered some lunch and then went to ‘board’ our flight to Delhi.
Once the other side of the boarding gates we were given new profiles. This time we had arrived in Heathrow from New York for a connecting flight to Manchester. There was no baggage to move about but security was rather different with us having digital fingerprints and digital photo images captured (all against our pretend profiles of course) then back through the gates again where I’d moved the vaseline into my bag so went through ok but Ady had to take his boots off again. We were at our gate about 15 minutes before boarding so sat and watched planes land and take off through the windows including a smaller plane which was parked right outside where we were sitting. On boarding we were directed through doors and realised we were actually in a tunnel onto a real plane 😯 – we hadn’t been prepared for that at all and if it weren’t for the fact everyone else looked equally shocked I’d have started to worry we were actually going to take off! We were all seated seperately but Ady swapped with someone to sit with Scarlett. Davies had a window seat but noone sat next to him so I moved over next to him too.
We had the full ‘welcome on board’ speech from the pilot, the whole safety demonstration from the cabin crew and had to fasten seatbelts so the plane could reverse out, turn round and then pull back in again :). Davies has only been on a flight (funnily enough from Heathrow to Manchester) when he was under a year old and Scarlett has never been on a plane so it was actually quite exciting for them. Our profiles were collected in (each profile had a questionnaire on the reverse for us to fill out and hand in – so we handed in our Dehli flight ones when we boarded that flight) and new ones allocated as arrivals passengers. This time we had arrived from Berlin and although I don’t remember any of the rest of the names we were given through the day I know I was called S Bone which amused me knowing a real life S Bone :). On the way out Ady asked if we could see the cockpit and the very friendly pilot and co-pilot installed Scarlett in the pilots seat, moved in it for her, let her press and pull things to land, climb and take off, pressed the button which lit up all the buttons and started a very American recorded voice giving DANGER LOW TERRAIN! messages which they didn’t play for long because they said they found it too alarming 😆 It was great :).
We were supposed to gather a trolley and a piece of luggage each but the children wouldn’t have been able to push trolleys (the profiles were randomly given out with no looking at gender let alone ages to see if they were appropriate) and in the event as we were the very last out due to our cockpit visit there were no trolleys left anyway. So Ady and I grabbed a bag each and we went to the TRAINS/UNDERGROUND exit as per our instructions sheets. And that was it. We filled in our last questionnaires which we exchanged for goody bags (nothing thrilling, a brushed metal luggage tag, pen, passport holder and universal plug in a T5 bag – there are some listed on ebay :lol:). Then onto coaches to take us back to the hotel where we were parked. That was a much posher hotel than the one the presentation was in so we stood in the foyer at gawped at the grandness of the floors, chandeliers and staircases while Ady gave in our pass to get a free exit ticket from the carpark.
It was a really interesting day out actually. We are unlikely to be using an airport any time soon but they are exciting places and this one is very new and shiny. It was odd to look around at a pretty busy airport (I think there was about 2200 volunteers today doing trials) and realise they were all pretending. The actually going on a plane and seeing the cockpit was a real added and unexpected bonus too. We had things to write on the questionnaires that were really good and others that were less good. You can apply for up to three trial dates, I don’t think we’d bother going up again but we all enjoyed the day – quite cool to have been among the first people in that terminal and to have been a little part of history too. 🙂
The journey home was lengthy, there had been an accident on the M25 and we were all pretty tired. The children watched films. We called into Asda on the way home for a few bits and were pleased to get home for tea and coffee (there had been plenty of water on offer all day but no hot drinks once we arrived at the airport). Primeval watching and straight to bed for tired children. I’m planning a bath and some wine for as long as I can keep awake!
I think it sounds great fun, if we lived closer (and I’d known about it!) I’d have done it too. Glad you enjoyed it!
Comment by Sarah — 23 February 2008 @ 8:57 pm
I agree Sarah – If we’d have known about it we’d have been up for it too. Trials are all full now though.
Comment by Simon — 23 February 2008 @ 9:15 pm
Blimey – sounds like my idea of hell! Glad you enjoyed it, though!
Comment by Allie — 23 February 2008 @ 9:25 pm
LOL Allie!
Great that you got to go in the cockpit.
Comment by Ali — 23 February 2008 @ 9:43 pm
S Bone
I’m wondering if that is actually me. about 18 months ago I was working for the company that was installing the automated check-in systems and they used my passport for several of the check-in tests! They probably wiped that data though…..
Comment by Simon — 23 February 2008 @ 9:54 pm
Sounds fun but not for me, I love the flying and holiday too much to walk away without actually going LOL! Good prep for the kids in the future though.
Comment by Roslyn — 23 February 2008 @ 10:27 pm
Surely it’s too much of a coincidence not to be you then Si? All the other profiles had full names on them but this was the last one so it didn’t – just S Bone otherwise I’d have checked to see if it was Simon. I did wonder who’d been given the job of making up all the names, I guess no one did then – they were all real people! What a huge coincidence that I got that profile then!
Comment by Nic — 23 February 2008 @ 10:28 pm
Cool I’d say!
Those photos must be from someone working on the project. Looks fab!
Comment by Roslyn — 23 February 2008 @ 10:42 pm
Does sound good, glad you all enjoyed it – exciting to go in the cockpit 🙂
Comment by Alison — 23 February 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Very cool they got to go in the cockpit! Andrew did too the first time he flew in a plane but didn’t get to sit in the pilot seat or press buttons, he still thought it was amazing though and wants to fly a plane some day.
Comment by Liza — 24 February 2008 @ 1:19 am
There was a programme on TV last night (Imagine on BBC2) about the architect of Terminal 5:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imagine/article/richard_rogers.shtml. It’s worth seeing if it’s on iPlayer or repeated. (I’ve just checked and it wasn’t on iPlayer.)
Interesting fact I learned: they also designed the Dome, and the cost of the dome itself was only 7% of the total project cost (most was the exhibition inside).
Comment by Bob — 27 February 2008 @ 9:36 am