Exercise 26. Read and translate the Supplementary text 1 (ST 1)

CHAOS AT HEATHROW’S NEW TERMINAL 5

When Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was officially opened by the Queen in March 2008, operator BAA said that it would put the airport at the cutting edge of global travel.

The complex, which cost £ 4.5 bn, includes 50 new aircraft stands, a large car park as well as rail and underground links to London. It is designed to handle 12,000 bags an hour.

BAA claimed that checking in for flights would be simplified for up to 30 million passengers a year by online check-in, fast baggage dropping facilities and sophisticated baggage handling.

Two weeks later, on launch day, however, dozens of flights in and out of the new terminal had to be cancelled due to a breakdown of the baggage handling system. By the end of the first day, hundreds of passengers were left stranded at the airport and there was a backlog of more than 15,000 bags.

What had gone wrong?

On launch day problems started almost immediately, when staff and passengers had trouble locating car parks. Delayed opening of check-in then led to long queues. Additionally, workers in the baggage sorting area had problems logging on to the computer system or could not handle the RMS (Resource Management System), which allocates baggage handlers to load or unload aircraft.

As the check-in staff were not aware of the situation, they continued to add luggage to the system. As a consequence, check-in had to be suspended in the afternoon.

An aviation analyst later explained that the backlog of baggage was mainly caused by problems with the terminal’s three-stage baggage processing system.

The first stage, the fast bag drop-off, was working as planned, but the second stage, an underground conveyor system, had become clogged up because baggage workers were not able to remove the bags quickly enough at the other end.

BA said that they knew the first day would be critical because of the size and complexity of the move into Terminal 5, and that they were working hard to resolve these issues.

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