Pigeons

That was more the X Ray thing, I believe, and has had to do with whether laptops have to come out or not. Most airports outside the UK still operate a laptop out procedure

Charging over and above the fare for check in baggage is rapidly becoming defacto in the U.S., even on the larger airlines.

It's irritating when this is handled at check in and typically involves the same people who travel once a year and don't know how to use security either.

BA have a good system whereby you can prepay for additional items over the allowance and it just goes into the booking. This works much better than Ryanair's system of maximum inconvenience for the passenger.

Following up to Andy Hall

seems to be the Ryan ethos

These and others like Easyjet are OK for a once a year traveller who wants a low price and doesn't mind the inconvenience too much, including the trek to Loon Airpaw.

For people traveling every week or every other week, it becomes unacceptably irritating very quickly.

Following up to Andy Hall

i much prefer that to Heathrow!

Well now that T5 is (kind of) working, that isn't bad, although it is really 25000 sqm. of retail opportunity with some planes at the side. The central area terminal are well past their sell-by date, I agree.

Following up to Andy Hall

its also (for me) much more of a pain to either take three trains (dragging luggage) or tackle the M25/M4 traffic than just drive up to Luton, Stanstead or even Gatwick.

I see your point.

Just room for a little link?

Wasn't too hard. It was there for a good 10 minutes.

I'd just come down to make coffee, heard a thump, and thought "Bird strike on window". Well, I was half right!

Andy

T1 has had a new paint job in places, and the passport area is newly enlarged (moved forward from the old pokey location). Currently T1 is almost empty so if you get a choice of shabby but swift T1 or shiney but now overloaded T5 (passport area chokka) I plumb for T1. The new downside to LHR is combined domestics and internationals so domestics have to get a mugshot taken going airside [hey, on topic!]. Mad but the shops want both sets of punters.

Luton arrivals, like Stansted, is a mess of slow "UK Border" (ugh) bottlenecks. It was nice of passport plod to invent a system even slower than the old check in systems.

Several.

Just now -- two baby pigeons have landed on the table and started feeding. I haven't put any more food out since last Thursday, and there's still quite a lot there. Hasn't been touched until just now. Apart from those two baby pigeons, there are still no birds around though.

Well, they were.

I had the misfortune to fly out of T3 a few weeks ago. *What* a shithole.

The only redeeming feature in there is Virgin's lounge which is very nice.

I have to say that T3 is now better than T1 has become. At least one can get through T2 fairly quickly.

Really, though, they all need to be demolished and something better integrated built.

Unfortunately Premium Economy passengers can't use it. In future I'll pay for one of the commercial lounges.

Isn't that what's going to happen?

Terminal 2 is due to be demolished next year. A new terminal (currently known as Heathrow East) will be built on the site of Terminal 2 and the Queens Building. Terminal 1 will be closed when Heathrow East is opened:

They could easily do that for a fee because there are not that many Premium Economy seats. It is probably the best facilitated lounge in terms of what they offer.

A good idea. There is nowhere remotely pleasant to sit in the departures area.

I believe so eventually.

That was the original terminal, although ironically it's currently in a less bad state than T1.

I suppose that this is the least bad way to manage it, but the practicality of the construction traffic is going to cause real problems.

I asked. The answer was "no".

Tell me about it. Indeed, to start with there was nowhere to sit, period.

Not been to T5 but otherwise LHR is the worst airport I use. Staff don't care, layout is bad, parking bad, public transport is bad, shops overpriced, even so called tax free is bad. My experience is Flights usually unable to land on time, so left flying in circles. Burgerking in T3 is sort of ok.