Terminal 5 finally opens at Heathrow

With a project that was once the largest in all of Europe, and that dates back 26 years, the British Airports Authority finally held its grand opening ceremony for Termial 5. While the official first flight out of T5 (as the Brits call it) won't take place until March 27th, today's events, with the assistance of Queen Elizabeth II, mark a triumphant end to the construction of the collosal new terminal. British Airways, T5's soon to be sole occupant, is looking forward to moving their Heathrow operations into the new facility wich will be fully capable of handling their entire flee including their Airbus A380s on order.

While the main terminal and Concourse B will be ready for use on the 27th, Concourse C will not be opened until 2010. At full operational status, the new T5 will be able to accomodate 35 million passengers annually. Is that enough? Well, BAA already plans on completly reconstructing Terminals 1 through 3 by 2020 with the hopes of having an all new airport capable of meeting the demand of what is already the busiest international airport in the world. To get there, though, they will definitely need that third runway they have recently re-proposed.

BAA has put together a really cool video of the building of T5 which you can see here.