Heathrow T5 mess to cost BA $32M, pride

We haven't really hit much on the debacle British Airways is wading through with the opening of Terminal 5 at London Heathrow, mainly because we've been waiting to see what happens. Well today, Reuters is reporting that the chaos should be winding down for BA sometime next week. Of course, that's after the entire fiasco will have cost the airline GBP 16 million or about 32 million US dollars. The highly anticipated opening of T5 came with much pomp and circumstance after a very lengthy development. But after just 2 weeks of fumbled operations, BA has had cancel nearly 300 flights in and out of T5. The PR nightmare has also left thousands of passengers wondering how T5 could have swallowed up their allegedly missing luggage.

So far, all of BA's flights out of T5 have been short-haul. The carrier intends on moving all of it's long-haul international operations to the new terminal by April 15. Deutsche Bank is forecasting that this could create problems leading into the summer months with total price tag of GBP 150 million as the result of the SNAFU that is T5. Willie Walsh, CEO of BA, has already shot down the notion of stepping down from this FUBAR mess. I guess he's never heard of the ancient Japanese ritual of seppuku.

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