T5 and Plane Food

In this post I'm giving you a 2 for 1 review of Heathrow's new Terminal 5 and Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food. Terminal 5 opened up in March 2008 as the new home of the British Airways airline. It was to be the gleaming new terminal with every modern advancement in airport infrastructure imagineable that would take Heathrow's capacity from 60 million passengers per year to 90 million. As you can imagine T5's opening was a complete flop with over 20,000 bags lost in the first week and British Airways delaying the move of it's long haul flights out of the terminal for months. The 20,000+ bags were eventually sent to a company in Milan for sorting and the airline posted a "we're sorry" banner on their homepage. About a month after the opening I had a flight out of T5 and actually found it to be the best airport terminal I've ever been through. Because of the delayed moves the terminal was nearly empty and it has a wide range of dining and shopping options to keep me occupied for hours. It also has, in my opinion, the nicest and most well stocked British Airways lounge in the world that includes an Elemis Day Spa. I then became a huge proponent of T5 dispelling any rumors that there were still challenges with flying out of this terminal. But yesterday T5 failed me.

Owing to a terrible accident on the motorway, I was cutting it close to making my flight to Munich. In general I'm pretty bad about getting to the airport early anyway since I feel my time is being completely wasted just sitting around. Instead of catching the 2:10pm Heathrow Express I made it onto the 2:25pm which would get me to T5 by 2:50pm for a 3:25pm flight. I got to the terminal and ran for my life with every expectation that I would get on that plane since I had 30 minutes to go. I made it all the way to security with carry-on luggage only and boarding pass in hand by 2:53pm and was hopelessly turned away. I went to the British Airways counter fully enraged and ready to make a scene when they kindly informed me that the airport requires all passengers to clear security at T5 35 minutes before their flight departure. This is due to the fact that T5 spans the length of 5 football fields so they want to make sure you have at least 35 minutes to run from one end to the other. The British Airways manager did try to hold the flight for me, however unsuccesfully, and got me on the next flight to Munich which meant I had 2 hours to kill stuck in the airport. Since they made every attempt to get me on the flight and didn't charge me for changing my flight (you never know with these people) I decided to stay calm and not go ape sh*t.

Wtih 2 hours to kill I decided what the heck, I'll go sit down for a nice meal at Gordon Ramsay's latest overt display of arrogance called Plane Food. To be continued...