As I was sitting in the departure lounge of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow, I saw a  swan fly past the window. I remember wondering if the bird had flight clearance. The fleeting glimpse of that beautiful bird will be one of the most distinctive memories that I will take away from my first visit to the new British Airways facility. The rest of the experience has already faded into a blurred memory of steel, glass and chrome.

One of the cabin crew on the overnight flight from Boston had implied that I would be blown away by my experience of the new terminal. So I was disappointed to find it only a little more impressive, and just as inconvenient, as any other capital-city airport.

Maybe I am just another jaded business traveler. But then I would be willing to bet that a small number of jaded business travelers will account for the majority of the traffic in the new terminal. Pareto’s Principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 rule) applies to travel just as much as it does elsewhere in the marketing world. Will the other frequent travelers find Terminal 5 any more convenient than I did? I doubt it.

Don’t get me wrong. It is an impressive building. If I remember the blurb correctly, it has the largest unsupported roof span in Europe. But the impressive design did little to make my travel easier. As I came in from Terminal 4, the scale of the building simply seemed to require that I walk farther and negotiate what seemed to be an excessive number of escalators.

Arriving by bus, you enter the building in the middle of the ground floor and go up one story to security, which is at the far end of the building. From there, to get to the British Airways lounge, you have to go down again, to the departure floor in the middle of the building, before you make your way up to the lounge, which seems to be at least two stories above security. Did it not occur to someone that this is a complete waste of time and effort? Or maybe I just misread the signs. Perhaps this path was intentionally designed to get people to walk past the shops? But if I’m going to shop, I want to drop my luggage off somewhere first, thank you.

Like many brands, Terminal 5 sets out to create an impressive experience, but in the process it fails to really meet the needs of its customers. I would gladly forgo the pomp and splendor in favor of less time spent getting from A to B and better signage. I am sure this desire will come as no news to British Airways, since they state on the Terminal 5 Web site:

"The creation of Terminal 5 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to redefine air travel. Our aim was to replace the queues, the crowds and the stress with space, light and calm."

A laudable objective and one I wish they had achieved. I saw no queues, but I did see plenty of stressed-out people asking for help finding their gates. The noise reflecting back from the roof made the atmosphere anything but calm. Perhaps with a little more focus on customer experience and a little less on impressive design, British Airways would have achieved the stated intentions. Could it be that an architect can derail the intended functionality of a building in much the same way that the director of a TV commercial can distort  a successful creative concept?

Please chime in with your ideas on this matter. If you have traveled through Terminal 5, I would love to hear your impressions. If you agree with me that British Airways failed to hit the spot, why do you think that happened? 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Brands, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page